'I'm still mad at you'

The only five words that I wish I had never said to anyone in my life and wouldn't have if I knew what was to happen.

I was nineteen, living away from home for university and things had finally settled down and I was enjoying both my studies and my new friends.
I had spent six weeks in a relationship with a fantastic young man, Mac (my first love) after an end to a rocky relationship and was on the track to healing after the loss of two of my friends to suicide. He had stuck by me through it all.

I had come home for the holidays as I did every time.
The first Saturday, I knew my school friends were visiting somewhere close to where I lived and looking forward to catching up with them in my home town.
I waited for the call and got it - an hour before they were to catch the train home again. I was mad and disappointed. I had wanted to spend the time with them and felt as if I had been shoved in between destinations.

We caught up and I only got 10 minutes with my boyfriend.
I waited with them at the station until the train where he gave me a gift - a silver locket that he wanted to give me for my birthday the month before but didn't think it was appropriate at the time. He told me he wanted to get it engraved with the date when he got his next pay check.

I thanked him, we shared a quick kiss but I told him I was mad at them for leaving me till the last minute when I would have been happy to tag along and run their errands with them. I had just wanted to spend time with him and the others.

48 hours, I wished I could take back those last few words, changed what happened and told him how I really felt - that I loved him.
That morning, I got a phone call from my friend Liz. There had been an accident. After the weekend, Mac had decided to surprise me and come down for the day to make up for it. He was on his way to the station when he walked out between two cars and was hit. They also think the driver was speeding as well. I've been told, he died on impact.

I generally chalk a lot of experiences up to life and that if they're meant to happen, they will. But the moment I said those last five words to someone I loved, which I spent months racked with guilt over are the only ones that I wish I could take back because I never had the chance to.

Submission by: Moon


Years ago I had a friend that I thought had AIDS, I always thought that he was different, but he was always kind to me. After he died, I had said to a few of my friends that I thought that he had passed from AIDS, because I never saw him with a girlfriend, not after he and I had broken up.
I later found out from my aunt who married his great uncle, that this young man had died from cancer, and NOT from AIDS. I felt so bad at assuming, at telling everyone that I thought he had died from AIDS, that I wish that I could take it back. He was a good friend, and I should never have assumed anything. I wish I had just come out and asked him before he passed away, but I never got the chance. He was just so very sick and it came on so quickly and he left this world within a years time.
So if I could change anything, it would be to ask him if there was anything I could do. Also, not to tell people what I thought was wrong until I got the truth.

Submission by: Midnight Winter WOLF


'My Do-Over '

What would you change if you could go back?? If you could have a Do-Over or put in something that we lack?
Would you change a marriage you had? Maybe even relationship that went bad?
Would you go back and redo something?
Make a wrong you did and turn into right?
Take something back you did or said to someone just in spite? 
I would go back in time-way back to when I was only sixteen
When fighting with my mother because I though I knew everything,
I would have not yelled or fought with her, I would have said I love you to her more. I would have seen the glimpse of the life I have already led, So, I would have held my mother close and not a tear I would let her shed.

I would go back in time to change a wrong into right, I made no mistakes in bringing my children into this world, just a little too soon I think as I look back and see it all in hindsight. 
I would go back and tell the world he was hitting me,
Press those charges and get away from him so all could clearly see My beauty far within me deep, before he beat the kindness out of me,
Finished High school, went to College for a Teaching degree.
Although I know that I have become all of who I am today
For I went through the storms of my life that shaped made
whom I have become
So, after thought, maybe I would not change those things
in my past that seemed so dumb Except to go back to that day I made my mother cry,
in her room she wept and I wasn't there to dry her eyes.
I would change all the things I did or said to hurt her
I would replace them all with love, hugs and kisses until it was a blur..
To make her forget any pain I have ever caused my dad or her...
I am thankful to have her here with me still in my life, To try until the end of my days to make up for my teenage strife.

Submission by: Tracy Knight


"If I Could Turn Back Time"

When is that we tell ourselves that we have made a serious, serious mistake in our lives and we know we are going to have to suffer the consequences of our actions for the rest of our lives, or maybe less if we have managed to pick a mistake that is in fact fixable ... but in most cases they are irreversable.

I grew up in a smoke-free home. My parents did not smoke, and although we had plenty of relatives who did smoke, it just wasn't something that had ever crossed my mind to do. As little kids we used to pick these skinny little grass strands, light them and I guess you could say, simulate the actions of a smoker, but to actually put a cigarette in my mouth as a child was not something I ever did or wanted to do. 
At 15 I met a young man, a military man who smoked, and yes I know that is definitely something that fits within the realms of this theme I could write about right now, but won't, so we'll just stick to the cigarette escapade for now, and even though he and I ended up getting married when I was 16 and were together for 8 years, his smoking did not entice me to pick up a cigarette and smoke it ... but too much wine and a left behind pack of cigarettes in my house did!

In 1969 my husband was stationed in Alaska for a year and I returned home, yes with a little boy of 18 months, oh how the story continues, and I went back to high school to finish up my Junior Year. During that time I had a sister who was a Junior and she and I bonded as teenagers as we never had a chance to before. She smoked, I did not. She drank, I did not. But by the time the year was over, I smoked and I drank! Crazy how teenagers manage to turn their lives upside down without ever thinking about the consequences that will come to haunt them years down the road after they grow up and have settle deep within their lives.

One night I pulled a cigarette from a pack of Camel (non-filter) cigarettes that had been left at my house after my sister and a bunch of our friends had left. I walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and put it in my mouth. Did I think I looked cool? Yeah, I guess I did, plus the Boones Farm Apple Wine was telling me I looked cool, so I lit it. Instant vertigo! Wow, I was so dizzy I could hardly stand, it was worse than the wine I'd drank too much of. I put it in the sink, crawled over to my bed and up on top of it and lay there thinking about how could anyone ever smoke such an awful thing! I don't remember anything after that for that night.

I haven't even got a clue as to why I did this, but it is a moment in my life that will never ever be put behind me as something good I ever did. I drove to the store the very next day and bought myself a pack of Marlboro Reds and from that day forward, for the next 37 years, minus 1 year and 5 months inbetween where I'd put them aside, I smoked.

My Regrets: Lighting up that first cigarette, being weak minded with no will power to stop myself from damaging a perfectly, almost healthy body at the time, that would come up to slap me full force with diseases that would go unfounded for years until that fateful day when you are told you have Emphysema and it is irreversable, and that is just another disease to add to the Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Graves' Disease, Primary Biliary Cirrohis, and God knows what else is lurking inside this old body as I get older ... some of what may have, I say may have, been prevented if I'd only taken care of myself and not smoked that first cigarette. I read about the toxins in the cigarettes and I cringe to think I inhaled that for many years, caused my children and loved ones to inhale it for many years and now I must live with guilt of knowing that I may not have only hurt myself all these years, but how many others did I hurt in the process of me "just thinking that I was cool!"

To date I have been smoke-free for 2 years and 5 months!!!!!!!!!!!

Submission by: Lindamay

~ Beyond the Hands of Time ~

I guess I have one simple wish
if I could turn back time
That I would be 18 again
before my grandma died -

I'd go back so that I could change
one simple act of fate,
That on the day my grandma died
I was not running late.

I'd make sure I was ready
when mum and dad had said
Not arguing with my brother
about some stupid shirt instead -

I would not have dilly-dallied
through the shopping square
When we should have been at the hospital
visiting my grandma there.

But no, I was a teenager
and it was always about me
Beyond the realms of my own world
I could never see -

But at the end of that same day
I would come to find
That if I had been less selfish
we would have been on time.

I know that I could never change
the fact that she was ill
But at least I could have been there
when she was with us still.

It's something that has haunted me
for these past eighteen years
And just the merest thought of it
would reduce me to tears -

Why couldn't I just have been there
before she left this life,
Why couldn't I just have had the chance
to at least tell her goodbye?

To let her know I loved her
but I guess she'd always known
For all the memories we had shared
over the years I'd grown -

Yes, if I could turn the hands of time
and change that one last act
It'd be the day that my Gran died -
but then, I will never get it back.

© Christina aka Stina
30th June, 2008