regrets, jess
February 12, 2004, 10:57 pm

I'm planning my 3rd Annual Oscar party, and as I'm feverishly getting trivia together and ordering very swanky appetizers from the Sputnik Cafe, I'm getting the RSVPs. Please accept my regrets, says one evite response, I can't attend. Have fun!

What happens when you have to RSVP "No" on a relationship? On a friendship? How do you send your regrets then?

I made a mistake some years ago that couldn't be fixed easily or at all for a long, long time. It remains, to this day, the single worst mistake I've ever made. But as many times as I've pounded my head believing that I was sorry, I never really showed it until I realized I lost a friend, until the consequences directly affected me. As often as I reflected and wondered and stewed and obsessed, I never really learned from it until I recognized I had kind of developed a pattern of self-indulgent and selfish behavior because someone else turned his/her back on me, and then it hit home that I, in the karmic scheme of things, could finally understand some of the damage I caused. That is the hardest thing of all: recognizing that I not only made a mistake, but I didn't take responsibility for it until much too late.

So now I'm a better friend for it; I felt its consequences immediately and harbored them, and it has taken me 7? 8? years to pick it out, dust it off, and send my regrets on a relationship that should have been so much more than it was, it is, and could be. I'm delighted it is building, slowly, and purely, and it is a tremendous joy in my life; a weight lifted that I can see and hold and understand. That weight is a comfort because it shows me how far I've come, how much I've learned. All metaphors aside, I am eternally grateful that some people are far better at forgiveness than I can ever hope to be for myself, and that I have the experience now to not make the same mistake.

I still have regrets, and I'm not sure how to send them; in many areas of my life, I still want to come to the party, but I'm not sure how to RSVP.

Rest assured, when I show up, it'll be one hell of a get-together. In somewhat related news, delicious Fiestada and I are going to England this summer to visit the fantastic KatSlater in England in June. Drinking stronger beer, snogging adorable British boys, and the promise of jail time for drunk and disorderly conduct? That's a party! I do hope that having a bunch of frightful Americans monopolizing every ounce of British charm within a hundred foot radius doesn't send the magnificent Ramses into a state. Prepare yourself, Mother England, your cast aways are coming home for a bit! (Also, stores should prepare any The Office merchandise for my arrival.)