I have always been trying to live my life in such a way that I would not have regrets. My choices has shaped the person I have become and I stubbornly assumed most of my life that this attitude has prevented me from suffering much from regrets in my life. Unexpectedly, these last few years, I have been struggling more than I ever thought possible with just that; regrets.
Annoyingly, my regrets were not what I thought regrets would be like and I went around for these last few years thinking I was merely unhappy and that I couldn’t really regret anything because I always did my best. A few times, when I was especially sad, I would regret my life choices going back to my youngest years feeling that every stupid choice I had made from the moment of my birth until this very day had been an essential part of bringing me to that very unhappy moment in life. Then, the next day I would go back to pretending everything was fine – it was just that life is bad for everyone, who was I to expect a happy life?
I have been through many pretty horrible things in life and thanks to that I probably have PTSD, anxiety and traumas that, true to my most stubborn nature, refuse to heal. I did many stupid and reckless things when I was younger chasing that regret-free life I so desperately wanted. I was afraid. I remember dying once when I was a child, but was lucky enough to come back. How could I both hate being here, alive and well, and still be terrified of losing time, of wasting my life and looking back with regret on how I had spent my extra time? Well, if it doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. It still doesn’t really make sense to me either.
It was partly because I felt, even when I was just a very little child, that I had been born in the wrong gender, the wrong body, and that made me start hating that body. It was when I grew up into a young woman and people abused me and mistreated me because of how I looked that I grew to hate myself. It was a long process to start to love myself again, mainly because I always believed that I did love myself, when in reality I hated the body and the life on earth I was given.
Some of my traumas come from having been in a relationship with a man who abused me. That made me hate myself more, because I know full well the very moment I should have left him, but he convinced me to give him one more chance. Abuse isn’t something that happens from one day to the next, it is a slow process where one person forgives what we should not. Then, more and more often that abuse occurs and suddenly it has become all the life we have and fear keeps us in place. I broke free and I was, for the first time in my life, grateful everyday that I am alive. I am still grateful every single day to be alive, no matter how bad I feel, that feeling of gratefulness never goes away even for a second.
When I broke free of that, I got covid-19. I was very, very sick for a very, very long time and when everyone else got better and returned to normal life, I only got well enough to hide how sick I still was. Today, four years later, I am still struggling to get through every single day and these last years I have truly hated my body. I hate feeling weak, I hate feeling sick, I hate this practically chronic fatigue, I hate that I have felt like I lost half my time on this earth just when I realised I wanted to live.
What I truly regret is not the bad relationships I have suffered, not the abuse, not the many bad choices or stupid things I have done, not that I have nothing in my life except sickness and student loans. What I regret is all that hate and anger I have felt these many, many years. The hate changed, the anger changed, but it was always somehow directed at myself and my body. It is truly such a waste of life to hate or be angry. It is understandable that it happens, but to hold on to pain beyond what is reasonable is a waste of life. Our life. Yes, someone hurt us, yes we feel were betrayed. Holding on to anger and hurt, hating others for what they did, that doesn’t do anything to those people – they don’t deserve that we carry them around with us all that time. It only hurts ourselves.
I am not saying to not be angry, I am saying remember to let it go as well. I wish I could have let go of my hate and anger far earlier than I did, but honestly, I didn’t even realise I was holding on to those feelings before I got this sick. It was being this sick and sacrificing all the things that I love that makes life worth living, just so that I could go to work and study at a vocational school because my first masters degree didn’t leave me with anything but debts, that I realised how much I regret wasting all the time I had before on those negative emotions.
I feel I didn’t cherish those I care about enough, didn’t enjoy the good things in my life enough, didn’t allow myself to be as happy as I could have been, because all along I had all this hate, or darkness, inside of my heart. These last years I have regretted many things, only to now realise that my only true regret in life is not having let go of anger and hate when I could have. I feel a sense of relief and sorrow that I cannot describe, because I don’t know if that sense of regret will ever go away now. I don’t mind as much as I did, though, because I will use that emotion to never do something so silly again. I won’t hold on to the regret and if I am lucky, perhaps one day I can let it go. I will hold on to the lessons this regret has taught me and let go of anger and hate when possible.
Acceptance is hard, but it is a process no one else can do for us.
Now, I don’t fear regretting not doing something, nor do I fear regretting something I will do in the future. I will do my best to live a life where I cherish and enjoy every day, even when I am in pain, sick or hurting in some other way I can’t think of now. I will try and find the good in life and be grateful for that. The only thing I worry about now is forgetting to be grateful for the good I have in my life, not regrets. Regrets aren’t as bad as we tend to believe, because regrets can teach us how to live a better life – a happier life. It might not be the life I wanted or wished for, but it is the one I have. Our time on this planet is so very, very brief, I don’t want to waste it on hate or anger. I want to use the time I have on loving life with all that comes with human existence; both the beautiful parts and the painful parts.
Mostly, I want to be happy.
