You can just stop talking, I get it...

New romances... new romances are a trip, no mistaking.

They are like a rollercoaster of fun and nightmare mixed into a ball of hope and desire. All energy and expectation with no tether to reality anywhere close by.

We all do crazy things when we are first falling in love.

No question.

Don't get me wrong. I don't live in a world that believes that every budding romance is a tidal wave of 'I'm in love! I'm in love! I'm in love!'. Not in the least. My world is a world of doubt, second guessing and overcompensation, but it is also a world of grand gestures, small sins and sweet nothings.

The world that I have trouble dealing with is a very small world called 'Regret'. This isn't your run of the mill regret. No that sad-sack of a beast is almost non-existant in the modern psyche, thanks to TV and self-help books. No, the regret that appears is generally a small form of regret that raises its ugly little head one of those sweet nights...

You know the one that I am talking about...

Yep. that's the one...

Out with your honey, enjoying a pint or a coffee, listening to every word they say; like life itself depends on it. When it happens... yup, it happens, they get through an anecdote or life story and you look up, aghast, not knowing whether it is jealousy or sheer regret, but one way or the other you feel small. Smaller than you have in a while, like you don't exist and everything you've done to date doesn't actually qualify you as a human being. You think they are too good for you; they have experienced something you have only dreamed off. Why couldn't that be you?!?

This can hurt and hurt big. Some don't recover from it.

The key is that this is another person. You have to remember that. Every once in a while you luck into seeing that reaction in someone else and then you know.

Yup, you get it.

We are all human. We have all had pasts, some of which we are trying to escape. So what. Some of us have had such glorious pasts that we are trying to relive them, but every cloud has a dark lining.

Buck up.

Sometimes we are the storyteller sitting around the fire, getting the accolades and recognition. Other times we are part of the audience, listening to the story, taking it in. Once in a blue moon we get the chance of being the one that figures out what it means and then goes out into the world and makes our own little narrative.