I'm Adely Mone and this is The Slowdown.

I have casually said that I have no regrets.

That life is not a series of redoes or mistakes, but rather everything leading to where I am

right now.

I've said that, yes.

But there are still nights I wake up thinking about everything I've ever done wrong.

The faces of anyone I've even accidentally harmed, making cameos in my dreams like celebrities

appearing on a B-list TV show.

Can any of us really say we live without regret, without a sense that we have invented

and reinvented this self so many times that sometimes someone was harmed in our making?

And sometimes that person who was harmed was us.

It is so humbling to be human.

It's fascinating how wrong I can be even when I felt a certain righteousness with my own

life decisions.

I think as we age, we think there'll be a moment and ascension to the mountaintop where

suddenly you live without guilt or shame or rage.

But instead, we are always who we are.

I think what I'm saying is I'm trying to learn to love that.

To love that I will always be a mess.

Maybe the mess gets a little easier, a little lighter to carry.

But a mess I shall always remain.

In today's many layered poem, we see how the speaker is coming to terms with her own

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