I would love to go back and do it again.

The precious gift of time. I lost what I never even knew I had. Only until it was gone.

Perhaps regret is a theme that’s being dealt with in this new era. Why didn’t we see the signs sooner? Why did we take people and their kindness for granted?

I’m alone in a way that I’ve never been before. He’s always been there. And now perhaps for the first time, he’s not.

Unfinished business is another hot topic. What do you have to say to someone that hasn’t been said? Would you like to say it?

The problem with communication is that it takes two interested parties. Sometimes one party simply isn’t vested, interested, or able to hear. To spend even more of their time, on you.

For someone who has prayed to God to remove my shortcoming of vanity, I’ve surely been gifted humility. It is a far fall for the proud.

Someone who I saw a family with, who my family adored, I pushed away. To be fair, I honor the intuition of my former self. Because the signs were there and he wasn’t listening to my pleas for change.

But I wish I had done more. I wish I could have gotten the space I needed to come back to him. He has always been Team Victoria. The question I have to ask myself now, was I always Team Mr. Big? I look back to my journals from when we dated. We were so cute. So yes, I was – but something happened.

The last entry I write while we’re together, I’m on a plane to EDC Las Vegas 2012, and I seem very happy. I note that Mr. Big concerns me, but I don’t want to talk about it.

And you want to know what? I never talk about. In 11 years, I don’t talk about the break-up or the reasons leading up to it. I jump right into the next fun thing in my life.

It’s like something magically disappeared in my life. Blinders were put on me. And here I am, filled with so much regret.

I lost out. He wasn’t perfect mind you; but he had that spark in his eye which I just haven’t met in anyone else. I’ve kept looking for that spark, and it’s taken me until now to see that Mr. Big had it.

At 23 years old, I was completely unprepared to deal with the complex emotions I was feeling. It was so much easier to remove the problem and feel good again.

Well, that’s not a way to run a life. We aren’t islands. That’s actually the best way to waste time – chasing the feel good selfish moments versus having the real hard conversations. What’s really going on here? Why do you say that? Can we do it another way?

Part of the problem is that I already felt so isolated in my relationship. It was like I was in a party of 1 versus a party of 2. He was spending so much time with his friends, maybe typical of 24 yr olds, but for me, I wanted to start a family. And then his words. Sometimes his words would cut me in such a way and then he’d joke and make me feel better. It was ever so slight a control technique, but eventually the strongest wood block gets whittled down.

I was not feeling strong, and I couldn’t do the relationship alone. It was very difficult for me because I know I loved him.

I loved him so much it’s taken me over a decade to process it. To realize my feelings are still real.

His maybe not. But mine are. And whether we come together or not, I just have to be grateful for the memories that were shared. I’ll never be back on that Vegas plane in 2012 ever again (that was a crazy Spirit flight), to ask the question. Why does Mr. Big concern you? If he concerns you, why don’t you talk to him?

I suppose when you’re always in the party, i.e. drinking Black Labels on a flight to EDC, then you don’t really make time to have those difficult conversations.

Life can’t just be a party. That’s how it falls apart. And that’s sad.

I would have taken less parties and more nurturing along the way. We could have had so many more parties by now had we stayed together and did it that way.

We did 3 weeks in Europe, and 2 weeks later EDC Vegas, and I broke up with him a few weeks after that, right after our 2 year anniversary. I was overwhelmed.

Here I am a decade later, still overwhelmed. We had it so good, and we had no idea.

And perhaps that love is gone forever. What matters is learning the lessons. Don’t ever take love for granted. It’s not that easy to find.