What do you say when staring into the abyss?

Today's prompt reads as such:

Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Write an apology letter to yourself for not taking a chance you wish you would have taken in life, love, work, or...?

This has the potential to get maudlin pretty quickly, and at first I wasn't going to do it (I would have found something to write about somehow lol). However, after some thought, it really doesn't have to be as such and I don't see why it should have to.

Dear Bex,

Your life is far from perfect. You live in a little flat that is practically crumbling down around you. You have no qualifications of any worth and your CV is pretty shite. Somewhere between now and the age of 15 when you were top of the class for various different subjects something went wrong.

But it's not down to not taking chances. You've taken so, so many chances, and one way or another they've all fallen through for you. All of them except one, and that was the chance you gave Ben some five years ago in two weeks time, and you know very well that you very nearly didn't give him that chance.

There are people out there who will tell me that I'm ridiculous for thinking that this is something worthwhile. I don't live in any great comfort, haven't been on a holiday in five years (sorry, I love my family, on both sides, you're all fab people but coming to visit you all is not really a holiday) and we can barely pay the bills (though this is better than this time two and a half years ago when we point blank couldn't pay the bills at all). All our stuff is second hand or pass me downs.

Don't really care though. Life may be difficult, but I have someone to share it with. I don't know what it is I want to do with my life if I can be frank. I'm still trying to work out the answer to 'what can I do that I will be decent at that will keep my attention long enough so I as dont just give up at the first hurdle but will still earn me some money as opposed to no money'

Some people say they will leave marriage till they have 'succeeded' in whatever it is they have their eyes set on. I chose to ignore this. When push came to shove I made my choice as to what was more important to me. I could have left Liverpool and gone home with my folks and had I done that, had I not taken the chance to stay here, in all likelihood we couldn't have made our relationship work. I would rather be here now with someone who appreciates me and values what I can bring into his life than be working for some dead end job for a boss whome I'll never be good enough for, or for whome it doesn't matter what I do, there are no prospects. And when I get into work again, and find myself working for someone for whome I can never be good enough at a job which has no prospects, it won't matter because when I come home at night I am not greeted by an empty house or by parents who think I should long have flown their nest, but by someone who needs me as much as I need them.

I have the rest of my life to find money and material comfort, and what doesn't kill me now, and what hasn't killed me before now, has only served to make me (stronger/cynical/realistic...delete as appropriate). At the end of the day, I have something worth much more than £'s or certificates of education, and whilst it's easy to say "life is hard because I didn't make the right choices and turned down the opportunities and chances that I had" I'm afraid I have to dissapoint you in your search for vindication to your gloats and your ammusement in my failure and say instead "I'm actually rather satisfied with my life on the whole because the choices that I have made and the chances that I did take brought me a companion with whome I can stare into the abyss and say 'yeah fuck you too asshole' when things go to shit, and not everyone has the luxury of such a person"

So in conclusion, dear Bex, no, I will not appologise for not taking x chance or y chance, but I will thank you for having the strength to endure what you have, from financial hardships to feelings of abject humiliation before your friends who have accomplished where you have failed, because if you had succeeded where you wanted to in the first place you would have gone to Edinburgh and you wouldn't have met your wonderful Ben.

Love

Yourself
xxx