Living to the point of regret

Watching an episode of “Breaking Bad” recently (S03E10 Fly), I felt an anguished connection to a sentiment Walt expressed (spoiler alert – if you haven’t yet seen that episode and plan to watch it, feel free to skip this post).

Well I missed it. There was some perfect moment… and it passed me right by. I had to have enough to leave them. That was the whole point. I mean, none of this –  none of this – makes any sense if I didn’t have enough. But it had to be before she found out. Skyler. It had to be before that.

Perfect moment for what? To drop dead? What, you saying you wanna die?

I’m saying I’ve lived too long. I mean, you want them to actually miss you, you know? You want their memories of you to be… It had to be after Holly was born. I know the moment. It was the night Jane died. Yeah, I… I was at home and we needed diapers and so I said I’d go, but it was just an excuse. No, that was the moment. That night. I should never have left home. Never gone to your house. Maybe things would have… I was… I was at home watching TV. It was some… some nature program about elephants. And Skyler and Holly were in another room. I could hear them on the baby monitor. She was singing a lullaby. If I had just lived right up to that moment and not one second more that would have been perfect.

I’ve felt that way some days. Still do, often. If only I could have, um, stopped living… before I screwed up my life, before I hurt my wife so deeply. For the most part, I think, my kids love and respect me right now; I think they have mostly positive memories of me. But some days I fear for the future… that something that I do or say… something that I AM… will end up being too much.