By Caleb Gonzales, Staff Writer
A car honks. Vehicles fly past my left, far faster than I can keep up. I look down at my speedometer, and it reads about 17 miles per hour. I push myself, and it climbs to 18. I continue.
Times like these are when I feel most like myself. I fly on my bike, the wheels and gears whirr and my shadow flies across the ground. My legs push the pedals, and I allow my mind to wander as the road is automatically processed. My body makes frequent adjustments to the speed and direction of the bicycle, dealing almost unconsciously with fatigue, hills, obstacles and turns. My mind tethers itself to my physical form, and then floats off into space.
No regrets.
What’s the point of regret? It is simply a misplaced longing to change something in the past; something that holds you back. Sure, I wish some things were different, but I know that if I were to go back in time nothing would change. I’ve given it my best shot so far.
I suddenly stand in a school courtyard. It’s an elementary school, the one I attended in the first grade. It’s all concrete. Every door is uniform in color, but I see them colored by imperceptible shades of the electromagnetic spectrum. School seems to be in session. Everything suddenly disappears, save for two doors across from each other. I look to the right to see a door open.
Classroom Six. A teacher appears and leads a young student, in the second grade, out of the classroom. It’s me, and I recognize Ms. Hansen. She leads me from the door, across the grey courtyard to another. Classroom Two. She opens it, and I see a portal that is not really there, of a path I chose not to follow. This is the Butterfly Effect; a small change in direction that lead to a radically different reality. My mother is going to be furious with her for this, but she doesn’t have the power to lead me back across this path. I don’t even try to stop it; I just let us go. Ms. Hansen leads the child through the portal, having forever changed the course of my life.
The school suddenly changes, and everything is different. I see boarded windows. The doors stand, but paint peels. Graffiti adorns the stucco of the walls, and I see that the playground has been dismounted. Then it disappears.
No regrets.
I appear again outside a house. I immediately recognize this house as the one where I grew up. I hear the inaudible screams, which I know are my own. My mother and sister are home, but my dad has left angrily. I know this.
My mother is furious and frustrated, having likely punished me multiple times that day in an endless struggle to get me to do my homework. I was home-schooled at this point in time, and I realize this day could have been any day between my fourth and fifth grade years. The implications of this new dimension in which Ms. Hansen has led me are not really evident thus far. Not yet, at least. I continue to struggle with my mother.
No regrets.
The scene shifts again. This time it’s my eighth grade year. My sister and I have enrolled in River Springs Charter School. This is where things begin to be different. I watch myself from a distance. It is apparent to me, in this moment, that this school only hosts students as high as eighth grade. If not for my teacher before, I never would have come here. I see another parallel reality, one in which I was never sent back one year. It is not a clear vision, but I see the absence of things present in my life today. I never knew my teachers. Erik, Ivanka, Emily (…) none of these people appear. Even some parts of my character, which I was driven to develop because of these people, are gone. The scene shifts again.
No regrets.
I stand with my mother in line for freshman registration. I look at the class selection form with my mother. I see a box that I did not see back then, labeled “Honors Biology.” I knew nothing about honors classes at the time, but I wish I had selected that box. I have to move on.
No regrets.
I shift to my freshman year. I stumble around naively, not knowing what’s going on. Coming from home-school, online school and charter school, I do not understand public school. I am still learning how to integrate myself into society, and I do not handle this especially well. I see myself make mistakes, especially one that, for the first time, teaches me the feeling of regret. If I were to go back in time, there would be that one thing that would be different. One thing. I notice my interactions with my peers and their reactions to me. It wouldn’t be until later that I would look back and actually understand them. I relive every memory I have from that school year, in that second. But the scene inevitably shifts once again.
Darkness surrounds me, and I find that I am floating in a void of blackness. I look down and see nothing, but I look up and see everything. It’s my life, exemplified in a multitude of various pathways. They all begin at the same place, but continue in different directions. A few stand out. I see a simple, straight line, one where my teacher never sent me back; one in which my life never takes twists or turns. It is difficult to see that path because I have not lived it. I see another, branching off from freshman year. It is clouded and I see many others branch off this one later. This path snakes over and punches into my chest, then passes through my shoulder. I feel no physical pain, but I now know that I will never forget I neglected that path. I begin to lose my strength and get drawn toward the one path that I can see clearly, the one which I walk. I notice the profound distance this one has taken from the simple path. I look and see many, many more paths from that one later on- many from those branches in turn. All of them are cloaked, but I see one path intersect with the one from before.
I slam into my path and lose consciousness. So this is what regret feels like.
Suddenly I am conscious again, flying across the pavement, pedaling toward my destination. I feel no emotions, only pain.
What am I going to do about it? There is nothing I can do. All I can do is try and forget the pain, try to drown it out with the pain in my legs. My speedometer reads 19, then 20 miles per hour. This is an outstanding pace for a decent cyclist.
All I think about is pushing myself. Drown out the pain which I can do nothing about. Forget it, bury it under the asphalt. I push on, maintaining my speed. It takes me a while to reach a point where I pass a road that is unfamiliar to me. At this point, I stop. I gaze down the strange street and back to my current road. I realize that I have no idea where I am going, where this road will take me, nor how to get back. All I know is that I’ve come a long way. I shake off my confusion, back up my pedals and push on, remembering not to forget where I came from.