Through the Fog

Tag: regret

  • Borrowed Happiness

    I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour,

    where the edges blurred

    and the ache softened just enough

    to feel like relief.

    For a moment, I didn’t have to carry

    the full weight of myself.

    Laughter came easier,

    memories felt kinder,

    and the world loosened its grip.

    In that fog, pain was distant—

    muted, negotiable,

    something I could outrun

    with another swallow,

    another borrowed sense of peace.

    I mistook numbness for healing

    and silence for rest.

    But heaven knows I’m miserable now.

    Clear-headed and heavy,

    left alone with everything

    I tried not to feel.

    The truth waits patiently

    for sobriety,

    for morning light,

    for the moment pretending runs out.

    There’s no romance in the aftermath—

    only the echo of what I avoided

    and the knowing that happiness

    built on escape

    never survives the night.

    I was happy for an hour, yes.

    But misery has a longer memory.

    And now I’m standing in it,

    fully awake,

    trying to learn how to live

    without needing to disappear

    to feel okay.

  • Regret is My Constant Companion

    Regret walks beside me

    like a shadow that never learned

    how to leave when the sun comes up.

    It knows my footsteps,

    matches my breathing,

    whispers the names of moments

    I wish I could touch again

    with gentler hands.

    I carry whole conversations

    that never happened,

    apologies folded small

    inside my chest,

    waiting for a door

    that doesn’t exist anymore.

    Sometimes regret is loud—

    a storm of what if

    crashing against the ribs

    until sleep feels impossible.

    Sometimes it is quiet,

    just a chair pulled out

    at the table of memory,

    sitting across from me

    without speaking,

    and somehow saying everything.

    I used to think regret

    was punishment—

    proof that I had ruined

    the only life I was given.

    But maybe regret is only love

    with nowhere left to go.

    Maybe it stays

    because something in me

    still cares enough

    to wish I had chosen

    more gently.

    And if that’s true,

    then regret is not my enemy.

    It is the part of my heart

    that refuses to become careless.

    The part that still believes

    even broken people

    can learn how to hold the world

    without hurting it.

    And maybe one day

    regret will loosen its grip,

    not because the past changed,

    but because I finally did—

    soft enough

    to forgive the person

    who didn’t know

    how to be me yet.