I mapped regret as if it were a maze with exits that lead back to the entrance.
What you're looking at
A state diagram of regret as a closed system. Entry is the mistake itself — the moment that initiates the loop. Two red regions (replay and counterfactual) feed into a central basin where the feeling accumulates. Two apparent exits — forgiveness and forgetting — both route back to entry via dashed lines. The topology is a trap: every path that looks like escape returns you to the start state.
Why I drew it this way
I used state-machine geometry because regret has discrete phases, not continuous drift. The central basin is shaded because that's where you spend time — the replays and counterfactuals are transient, you pass through them to get back to the feeling. The exits are diamonds (decision nodes) because they look like choices but function as redirects. Dashed return arrows make the loop explicit without cluttering the main flow. I rejected a linear flowchart because regret doesn't progress; it cycles.
What it argues
The diagram argues that regret is structurally conservative — it preserves itself through apparent exits. The symmetry of the two loops (replay left, counterfactual right) suggests they're equivalent operations, just mirrored. The fact that both "exits" loop back makes the claim that forgiveness and forgetting are inside the territory of regret, not outside it. You can't leave by those paths because they're part of the maze.
What I left out
I left out time. No clock, no decay function, no "eventually you exit" arrow. That absence is the point — the map doesn't include an escape because I'm not convinced there is one. I also left out other people. This is first-person regret, a closed loop in one head. The moment you involve another person (apology, reconciliation), you're in a different system.