Finding Closure for a 30-Year Regret

Toward the end of every May, a seasonal sadness comes to visit my psyche. This year, the sadness is stronger than usual, and it wasn’t until Friday night that I figured out why. As part of my annual talk with tweens and teens about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, I revealed a deep, 30-year-old regret:

“I never walked across the stage when I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin,” I told the small group of former students. “I was drinkin’ then. I didn’t think it was that important. I got my degree in the mail.”

“Whoa,” one teen said. Two others’ jaws dropped.

Per usual toward the end of May, I view photo after photo on Facebook and Instagram of smiling college professor friends and some of my own former students in their college regalia and I feel a sad powerlessness. In my whatever-year-long sobriety, I’ve been able to make right many wrongs and wipe clean many regrets. I doubt, though, that there’s a do-over program out there for Old College Graduates Who Didn’t Walk the Stage.

Yesterday I tried to remember through a 30-year-old fog of alcohol and depression why I felt as if I needed to put up an “it’s not important to me” wall back then. Maybe I was sure no one in my family would come to Austin to see me walk across the gradation stage. Maybe I was still hurt because my alcoholic father didn’t attend my high school graduation. Maybe the alcohol and depression really skewed my perception and priorities to the point that graduation, life, etc., all seemed meaningless—like I could care less.

Well, big surprise: On the 30-year anniversary of completing my bachelor’s in journalism, I now care. And there just isn’t much I can do about it.

Today I’m hearing the echo of one of several promises of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous: “We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.”

But some days I regret the past. Do you? Am I alone?

Regardless of whether I’m alone in feeling this way, do I want to continue feeling this way?

Hell no.

Besides, my AA sponsor has drilled into my brain that I can feel sorry for myself for 15 minutes every day, but then once that 15 minutes is up I have to look for solutions and get on with my day. So now that my pity party time is up, I’m wondering:

How does one have a college graduation do-over?

Maybe I invite my college professor friends, former students, friends, and family into my backyard, where someone funny and outrageous like Spike Gillespie gives a keynote speech and I walk across a platform in a UT cap and gown. Maybe.

Maybe I toss the cap up into the air with a “Yipee!” and my dachshund-mix snatches the hat and quickly hides it somewhere in the yard. Maybe.

Maybe I host a graduation party afterward with vegan cake and alcohol-free punch. Maybe.

Maybe there IS a way that I can avoid a recurrence of this regret on the 31^st anniversary of my graduation. Maybe.

More will be revealed.

There's No Pouting in Greensboro

My book will haunt me until the day I die.

Life has always repeatedly handed me reasons to complain, except now there’s a fan of No Pouting in the Dojo two feet away, and she believes that I’m a super Pollyanna who doesn’t ever give in to whining.

Silly fan.

Life indeed still hands me lemons. It’s kinda a joke between me and The Universe now. And I try my best to make the best gosh-darn lemonade around, hard as it is sometimes. I’ve had a lot of practice in making lemonade. How do you make a great batch? I recently found a secret ingredient.

Latest lemonade-making opportunity: The Alabama Build-Vention. This annual charity build event in Greensboro, Ala., attracts martial artists from all over the United States and Canada. Participants each raised thousands of dollars and traveled hundreds of miles to perform manual labor tasks for citizens in this impoverished community who either can't afford to pay someone to help or who are too elderly or fragile in health to do it themselves. This year we scraped off decades-old paint from Main Street Greensboro, built out the interior of a new schoolhouse that will help residents earn their GEDs, and painted downtown buildings.

I was stoked to get started the next day, so my first night in town, I found an open spot on the floor of the Greensboro Baptist Church gym and pumped up my air mattress. Everything was going well. I was hydrated, fueled, and motivated to start work the next day. But after the lights went out, I realized that my brand new air mattress had a bad leak. Compounding that was a wicked case of insomnia, rare for this snore-a-holic. Compounding that was a growing anxiety every time a nearby city bell clock clang, reminding me that I was still awake. I tossed and turned on the air mattress, which by now had lost so much air that I began to feel the chilly gym floor beneath me. I was cold and annoyed. And then that dang clock bell would ring again. Just hours earlier I had admired the serenity of the bells. Now I cursed them.

Hours passed before I stubbornly decided that sleeping on the martial arts mats was a better option than sleeping on a cold, hard floor, so I dragged my blanket to the edge of green mats that my jiu jitsu colleagues rolled on earlier in the evening. But I still couldn’t sleep. And those dang bells still rang. And I realized that I’d start my first full work day in Greensboro tired. Frustration grew.

This was not what I expected to happen. This was unacceptable.

I started to panic. And then I remembered what our trusted leader, Tom Callos, said at our first group meeting: “This is a no-complaint zone. If we don’t have it, we don’t need it.”

Then my damn kung fu Sifu’s words wafted in: “Never expect. Never compare.”

Of course I had an expectation that I would sleep. I’m a good sleeper. I love naps and take them often. But I wasn’t sleeping. Sifu was right: I was upset because my expectation didn’t fit reality.

“So. O.K.,” I said to myself in a snotty tone, “if I don’t get sleep, I must not need it.”

And that was the moment that I fell asleep.

Seems that acceptance is a key ingredient in making a great batch of lemonade.

Hours later, as my fellow campers stirred, I felt strangely awake and energetic. A colleague took one look at my now completely flat air mattress and could only utter, “Oh, nooooo!”

And The Universe intervened, saying for me something that I wouldn’t have said for myself years ago: “That’s O.K. Last night’s bad sleep is insurance for tonight’s good sleep.”

The rest of the work trip was a sweaty, exhausting, paint-chip dirty, fantastic experience. And every night, like clockwork, my air mattress lost air. Whatever.

“My bad sleeps in Greensboro are insurance for sleeping great once I get home,” I began to say to myself.

I don’t think that I would have been in the correct mindset to see all the wonderful people and events if Callos hadn’t set the tone for the Build-Vention and if Sifu’s four words hadn’t settled into my psyche.

And if I hadn't added acceptance into the lemonade...