Hazard

Sometimes, I’m floored by the sheer clumsiness I can demonstrate in seemingly simple things. I can trip on my own shadow and fall up the stairs. My mom still teases me for awkwardly apologizing to a tombstone on behalf of the buried man in Virginia City, NV, when I was 14.

I often look at my kids and wonder if there are any of my genes in there. They look like their dad, from head to toe. Sometimes they even sound like their dad, in the way their voice inflects, or the grin they get before doing something naughty.

But then the tallest falls off his bunkbed ladder because his pajama pants are too long but too comfy to get rid of, and my youngest walks his head into the wall because he’s paying too much attention to his toy cars.

At a pirate festival in 2019, I earned the nickname “Gravity Check” because I managed to tangle myself in my skirts and bootstraps, fall flat on my back, and I was mostly sober that day. When I worked at the mall, my co-workers called me “hazard” because I tended to knock things over by looking in their general direction or hurt myself in minor but annoying ways.

It’s been a long time since I regretted anything that had to do with embarrassment. I don’t go red in the cheeks when I’m reminded of the time my sister yanked my sweat pants down at a car show when I was 8. Or the time my cousin accidentally flung a crab leg into my hair at the Asian Fusion restaurant for his 10th birthday. Not even when I asked out a senior, but I was too shy, so I chucked a folded note at him, and his friends picked it up instead.

The thing I regret is not spending more time with the people I love. It’s that I never quite understood what my best friend and partner in life needed or wanted from me. It’s that after ten years of nearly being inseparable, two kids, moving hundreds of miles, getting into legal trouble, and back out of it again, I wasn’t worthy of his efforts anymore.

I regret not speaking up and pushing harder for couples counseling when things got rough. I regret being too blind to see when he was hurting because I was too exhausted and distracted by my hurt. I regretted not standing my ground when he crossed boundaries. I regret losing my best friend to time and the pressures of life.

What I don’t regret is filing for divorce after a final night of yelling and accusations. I don’t regret freeing myself from something so tumultuous and unstable that I dreaded the time we got to spend together because it would invariably end in heartbreak and tears. But I don’t regret standing up and saying I’m done fighting. Because when I said it was over, as much as it hurt, it was the beginning of a clean slate.

Last month’s Worm Moon was said to indicate clearing the energies around you and letting go of something holding you back. My runes cast the same message. Both of my tarot desks screamed at me to let it go, but I couldn’t figure out what “it” was. Last night, I let him go. I regret the time I’ve lost with him, not that he’s chosen himself over us, but I don’t regret letting go of what was holding me back.

I am free. I am broken, but I am unashamed.

I may be shaky and trip on my own shadow, but I am strong. I will get through this with no regrets.