People ask if I have regrets.
I regret how long it took. I regret confusing being needed with being loved, and staying in that confusion for as many years as I did. I regret the money, the time, the compounded heat of those three days, and every version of an apology I swallowed to maintain a peace that cost only me.
I do not regret leaving.
I do not regret refusing to fix it on their terms.
And every Thursday morning when I water the fern on the shelf in the south window, I think about what my husband said when we repotted it together, the obvious and necessary thing that turned out to be true.
Some things recover after being root-bound and left in the wrong container for too long.
They do not recover by going back to the conditions that diminished them.
They recover because someone finally moves them somewhere with enough light.
