#past hosts

Yes. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to live even one life without regrets, unless you can somehow manage to live without a conscience. The important thing is to never let your regrets define you, or your sense of self-worth. The frequency with which this question crops up tells me that we all grapple with that: with accepting we have made mistakes, and with moving on from them in ways that are constructive and healing.

Here is my first reply to the question of regrets, with answers for Audrid, Torias, and me, Jadzia.

Here is the second, with answers for Lela, Emony, and, least helpfully, Joran.

That leaves me with Tobin and Curzon, because Verad didn’t have the Dax symbiont long enough for a complete synthesis of pre-Joining memories.

Tobin had a lot of regrets, and he was one of those people who didn’t cope well with them: they would revisit him in his lowest moments, and they complicated his mental health struggles immensely. One particular regret that stayed with him his whole life was an encounter when he was fourteen. A fellow youth volunteer in a community-building program was a very dear friend to Tobin, and she asked him on a date. She was older than he was, finishing her final year of schooling before university, but because he was tall, quiet, and brilliant, she assumed they were much nearer in age than they were. She had self-esteem issues of her own, because of a congenital condition that left her with marked facial scarring, and it must have taken her a lot of courage to ask. Tobin was startled, and much too young to be going on a one-on-one date into the city with an almost-grown woman. He turned her down as politely as he knew how, but neglected to mention his age as one of the reasons he couldn’t go with her. After that, they only saw one another a couple of times. All his life, Tobin knew he had been right to turn down the invitation, but haunted by the knowledge that he might have hurt her deeply by his awkward rebuffing of it.

Curzon’s greatest regret is difficult for me to talk about, because I was unaware of it until my zhian’tara. As my first Initiate supervisor, Curzon washed Jadzia out of the program because of his personal feelings. He never truly forgave himself for that, and it’s something I was shocked to learn. Trill society has made such strides in equality for all genders over the course of Dax’s long life, but it is still incredibly painful to learn that you have been thwarted or held back because of gender, physical appearance, and a powerful, older man’s feelings for you. When that older man is a part of you now... that’s even more complex. I’ve made peace with that part of myself, but sadly, Curzon never did. 

https://jadzia-suggestions.tumblr.com/post/181263935672/what-is-your-greatest-regret

This is one of those questions I think everyone reflects on from time to time! I’ve linked to my answer to a previous asker above, because it still holds very true. But this is also an opportunity to address the biggest regrets of a few more of my previous hosts.

For Lela, her greatest regret was always that she delayed a real romantic relationship with the woman who ultimately became her wife, because she worried about the consequences to her political career. At the time Lela was running in her first election, women in Trill politics were rare. Anything that might have made her appear to be still more unconventional than a woman pursuing public office would likely have made her campaign far more difficult. While lesbian relationships and marriages were legal and generally accepted on Trill at the time, it was still considered an “alternative lifestyle” (whatever that means 🙄), especially among the Unjoined majority. It would have given a large demographic of her potential constituents second thoughts about a candidacy that was already controversial. As a result, Lela didn’t make earnest overtures towards the woman she loved until after she won her second term. Although they went on to have many happy decades together, Lela always regretted the loss of those first five years, when they were both youthful and idealistic and sweet.

Emony’s greatest regret was the rift with her father. He was opposed to her gymnastics career, believing she should have pursued library sciences instead – something she was considering during a brief hiatus due to a knee injury the year she was fourteen. He didn’t understand how deep her dream ran, or how driven she was to pursue it, and he was absolutely opposed to the amount of offworld travel involved. They fought about it constantly for almost a year just before Emony came of age. In the end, both of them said some awful things. Some very hard-to-forgive things. it was almost ten years before they exchanged more than a few curt pleasantries at family gatherings. I’m grateful they were able to reconcile before he fell ill, but again: the lost time is something to mourn and regret.