In an Instant

by Suzanne Redfearn

my way of dealing with these sorts of things is a gift, a bluntness that mystically never seems to offend. I think it’s more that other people overcomplicate things. If you simply say things the way they are, there’s really no right or wrong about it.

Regret is a tough emotion to live with, impossible to move on from, because what’s done is done.

fervent desire to turn back time, reverse fate, and be better than they were.

“We do not control our reactions, only our actions.”

She follows him into the kitchen, twisting an antibacterial sanitizer wipe in her hands.

I love the ocean, every part of it—the water, the waves, the sand, the wind, the constant ebb and flow—but mostly I love the smell,

Don’t just try to be happy when you think of me—be happy. Look at the ocean and smile. Inhale the scent and celebrate. Remember me.

Are we born with our strength? If so, then should we condemn those who don’t have it?

leaped to “someday” in an instant.

Give her a penny,

The way I view alcohol is that it makes you more of whatever you already are. Happy drunks are happy people made happier; nasty drunks, the opposite.

“everyone deals with traumatic events in their own way, and sometimes it’s not really lying when they tell it different than it was so much as remembering in a way that allows them to live with it a little easier.”

all of us are capable of doing what we least expect, them included. It is easy to sit in judgment after the fact.

An inch, a foot, not necessarily in the right direction, but onward nonetheless.”

“Until eventually,” he says, “the present becomes the past, and you are somewhere else altogether, hopefully in a better place than you are today.”

You only live once, and no one has any idea how long that once is going to be, so grab on tight and hold on for the ride and don’t worry about it and don’t look back.

his calling on the ocean. Like it once did for me, salt water runs in his veins. He used to tell me how it’s the last frontier, the only part of the earth not entirely known. His eyes would shine as he talked about how little is understood about its deepest depths, that two-thirds of ocean species still remain undiscovered, and that all the technology in the world still can’t predict a squall.

the ramifications of the choices each of the survivors made come back to haunt them. I’ve always believed regret is the most difficult emotion to live with, but in order to have regret, you need to have a conscience: an interesting paradox that allows the worst of us to suffer the least in the aftermath of wrongdoing.