I met Blandine in a café, when I was at the University of Letters, with some friends. We spent hours in this cafe, with a few pennies in our pockets and four coffees consumed in five hours.

We both very quickly became friends: evenings at her house, giggles, secrets as only women can do at this point. Blandine was a funny, sensitive, perhaps a little fragile young woman.

It lasted about six months like that.

And then one day like any other, I called her, to arrange an evening: strangely, no answer..

I did not insist, nor revived, considering that it was up to her to come back to me since I had called her.

I convinced myself that she would come back to contact me when she felt like it.

In fact, she never called back .

My friends told me, ten days after my call, that they had just found her. Blandine had thrown herself from the top of the rocks, in the valley of the Hérault, at the Pont du Diable.

Shock.

So I'm not megalomaniac to the point of persuading myself that the insistence of my appeal would necessarily have changed the situation.

Often, we believe ourselves responsible, in these cases, for a suffering that nothing could have extinguished.

But deep down, who knows?

So no, sometimes you shouldn't ignore someone who ignores you; this remains one of my biggest regrets.

It's a half-hearted regret.

Twice, I let go of professional opportunities for love.

I put everything aside (opportunities, prospects, career plan, window of fulfillment and fulfillment, autonomy) to follow the man I loved. Twice. Life repeats itself, you have to believe.

It's funny to register the opposite of what many (and especially women) have written on this answer so far.

Me, I had staked everything on the “relationship” to the detriment of my personal/professional life. Like what. Classic in my time too.

I had put love at the center of my life. Sorry, relationship. I was young too. Distinguishing the two was impossible for me.

So after graduate school, I chose to engage in a relationship to the detriment of my own life. My intellectual, professional, social life. I made that choice.

I had done very well in terms of studies, I had landed the most promising final year internship in terms of career in my field at the time: Recruitment and school relations department at BSN - today groupe Danone, at the Paris headquarters. I think I would have been hired in this group whose values ​​in terms of HR at the time were at the forefront.

I threw it all away for love. I went to live in Martinique. I didn't last 4 months and returned to Paris where I found a job in a month (which was a kind of magic at the time, forcing crisis, which one? That of 1991).

I quickly found a new job in recruitment, a tailor-made job, the dream for me. And again, after a few years, I found love again and I started the same thing again: I quit my job and went to live in the US this time. To follow love, once again.

It's a half-hearted answer since, even if I stopped working, I lived wonderful and rewarding years in a thousand ways.

It came out 4 very nice children and full of surprises, men now.

I regret that I was too shy to confess to a young man that I was in love with him in second grade...

I was deeply affected by this secret love…Later, I married someone who had basically the same physical characteristics and especially the same first name…

A few years later, I learned that he had married a woman who could have been my sister, we are so alike physically, and who has the same first name as me!

When I think about it, I say to myself that we “missed” each other, because I divorced and according to indiscretions, I know that her couple is not at best! .

I don't know, but I have a feeling of “unfinished” when I think about it… I don't really want to relive this kind of experience! I'm not a fan of reincarnation, but who knows?

Only one thing…

One day I followed my best friend to the cemetery to find his grandparents, whom he had not been able to visit after their burials. But we arrived late and it was already dark. The cemetery was dark and he didn't know where their grave was.

In short, we had to look everywhere. Needless to say, the atmosphere was gloomy… Also, towards the end of the cemetery I saw something that shocked me. Because by reading the names of the tombs, I realized that the oldest tombs had fallen into oblivion. The newer ones still had flowers, but towards the bottom, the name engraved on the tombstones was almost no longer visible...

So at some point I came to a broken grave, half buried in the ground. As if it had fallen decades ago, without anyone visiting it… Also, I am a native Quebecer, and I realized that this tomb represented today's Quebec, or its past and its heritage. culture is falling more and more into oblivion… This is why I had an urge in me to raise the grave and read the name of this forgotten Quebecer, who probably dated back more than 100 years… I do not didn't, falsely thinking that I couldn't touch another person's grave...

That's why today, I still think about it and when spring comes.

Unfortunately, many things have escaped me, and I regret nothing, because it is fate, and I firmly believe in it.

Without detours, for me, it is religious knowledge, which counts the most, I accumulated a good knowledge only late, if, God allows me to redo my past, as in a countdown, very young, I m I will do my best to study this matter with its multidimensional themes.

Life on earth counts for nothing compared to that provided for a devotee to live in the Gardens of Eden, and imagine, for eternity.

God says he created us for his worship, and in return, he (swt) promised us as a reward, eternal life in paradise.

In first year, a girl openly showed interest in me: we were from another class but she asked me to be her date at the high school gala (it was a private Catholic high school), she greeted me down the halls smiling, which no one else was doing.

But I didn't believe it. At the time, I had just left a college where the students had destroyed my self-esteem from top to bottom, marginalizing me and ridiculing me. The teachers didn't understand either that I was systematically penultimate in the class, or close to it, when according to them I was one of the brightest in the group. I didn't believe them either, even if it helped me to rebuild myself behind. My only friends were books.

So here is a young girl who had a crush on me. I didn't believe it. Instead I asked her if it was a bet she had lost when she asked me to accompany her. She didn't understand. I had just come out of an environment that was hostile and extremely deleterious to me to another that was much more family-oriented, friendly and benevolent. I was still a snail just beginning to emerge from my shell and this impromptu contact sent me straight back inside. Today I often think about her, since in retrospect I realize that I too found her attractive. I just wasn't ready and I still don't think I am.

For those who wonder what the establishments were: the first, my proselytizing and intransigent college-barracks is the private establishment Stanlislas, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. The other, welcoming and nevertheless almost as efficient as its illustrious neighbor is on the other side of Boulevard Raspail, is the Notre-Dame de Sion secondary school.

What use is regret if not to open the wounds that time has slowly healed,

What was the use of regretting having made choices, or giving up others when there was no possibility of doing otherwise?

If I regret one thing, it's having spent too much time stupidly ruminating on the dry leaves of a destiny that infernally crushed my carefree dreams, deep inside me, there was surely a voice that resounded that all that happened had a meaning, but I had difficulty in distinguishing it from the deafening din which enveloped my being after each misstep and each lapse, and when I finally admitted that what was, could not have been otherwise, I suddenly realized that I missed a beautiful part of my life.

Regret would ultimately only be the illustration of our inability to overcome our failures, where to apprehend our destiny, I would rather this vicious circle engulf me,

Thank you for the question Marine, and sorry for not having answered more concretely.

Ah okay, this is going to be a difficult one to answer.  

The thing I regret the most in my life is not standing up for myself and not respecting myself when I should have the most. I gave myself up for the sake of acquiring love and affection which wasn't even written in my destiny to get in the first place. I would continuously reach out to people who had clearly expressed that they did not want to keep any sort of contact. Yet, I couldn't picture a life in which my best friend wasn't around but now when I think about it in retrospect, I regret ever putting myself down the most.