Why do I feel like I've messed it all up?
The delusions and insights of regret
My Russian ex K was an Orthodox Christian. She believed deeply that this life was an exam, that our behaviour in it led to judgement and classification in the afterlife. In my naturally adaptive way, I said that I too believed that, in the German we spoke together, ‘dass das Leben eine Prufüng ist’, that life is a test. Yet even K noticed over time that what I seemed to mean in deploying this quasi-religious language wasn’t precisely what she did; as she asked me once, who is this God you are praying to?
I did in some way really believe that life is a test, but I suppose I meant that it’s a test without a subsequent qualification, that the only ‘pass’ in the test of living is to live, like a purist football fan who thinks the most important thing is to play good football rather than win trophies. (This suggests another essay, Tottenham Hotspur FC as a metaphor for human struggle). In this context the outward markers of success of a life are rather incidental to the practice of living well; it may even be advisable to always have markers to aim at of success unobtained. Always best to leave a little ambition for Ms Manners.
Strange then, given that I believe the above and don’t believe that there’s any ‘winning of life’, let alone any objective victory standard which would apply to everybody, that I have intense periods of feeling that I’ve made the wrong choices, that I’ve taken the wrong turns, that I’ve messed up my life.
I’ve recently hit a sticky patch in my own biography after some years of feeling things have been going rather well. Indeed, there seems to be a pattern in my life of the latter thirds of my decades being prosperous; 17-20 was good, 27-31 was excellent, likewise 37-41. As if it takes me most of each decade to bring that decade to a place of fruition.
My recent good run was linked to an upturn in career fortunes; I started this newsletter, I brought out my novel ‘Midlands’, and I finally found a stimulating full-time job. For a few years, it was pleasant climbing all the way, and I began this year not, for possibly the first time in my adult life, completely broke.
Recently, I made a major mistake in my professional life. I registered for a career test I wasn’t ready for, and, amidst a turbulent period in my private life, duly flunked it. It left me facing the possibility a very different future than the one I’d imagined, like my dream home being revealed to be a stage set. Still, I’ve seen the damage before that self-reproach brings, so I resolved to go easy on myself about it.
Pretty soon the old chastising voices came back with a vengeance. The sheer fury with myself. The voice telling me that, with just one attempt at these exams left, I’d made a fatal mistake. When I wake up in the night and shout in a raw voice ‘Why the fuck did you do that?’ Just this terrible rageful regret. For a while, I was so angry with myself, even tho I know the anger was unjustified and inutile. We all make mistakes. Particularly me.
By now, of course, I’ve been here before. When I was a teenager, I used to beat my own head with a plastic club. I cut my arms once and they scarred. And then came the defining cock-up of my youth, my dismal stewardship of the Oxford Revue – When Student Theatre Goes Very Wrong!™ – and the frankly obscene amount of time it took me to stop ruminating on it. Even in recent years when I’d get things wrong, I'd rain blows down on my own head, calling myself a ‘stupid bastard’ and the like, tearing my own (increasingly limited) hair out.
On a purely quotidian level I am a constant source of personal exasperation to me. At times, I feel I’m in constant conflict with the idiot me of a few hours earlier; the one who loses his credit cards twice in six weeks, or leaves his Belgian ID card in London and has to come back down from Nottingham to pick it up, or tries to clean the mould in his apartment and gets mould cleaner in his eye. The one who, if he has any extra money, almost always stuffs something up to incur a cost of exactly that amount. What am I do to with this idiot I am located in? He’s hard to live with sometimes.