Healing and Moving on From Guilt Over a Life I Could’ve Had but Didn’t

Normally, I want to keep things happy and optimistic on my blog. Yet, I’ve been feeling really down about a lot of things. So, for a while I’m going to publish post about things that have been worrying and bothering me. I don’t know how long this will last (Maybe a few posts?) but I just want to talk about these things for a while.

For many years, I’ve felt sad about how my life has turned out. I had plans for my life as a teenager, but the only thing that has worked out is figuring out why I felt so sickly all the time and to recover from it. I didn’t get a career I dreamed of, I didn’t get to move like I planed, and I still don’t have the family (Husband and kids) I always wanted. And the problems with my old high school classmates still was a problem… as well as with parts of my extended family. (For many years things just kept getting worse until I just cut off all ties with them) Things just haven’t worked out the way I wanted them to… and I never understood why.

For the past few months, I’ve been struggling with this problem more than ever. I have been cleaning out my things in a major deep cleaning/decluttering I’ve been doing, but I keep finding more and more things I kept from when I was a teenager. Especially when it comes to college applications, school assignments, and other things that remind me of what I thought my life would be like by now.

Throughout all this, I realized there are just some things that work out badly, but are really good. This has been pushed repeatedly throughout my cleaning process by things I would hear or read casually online. Some of the most memorable ones are plot summaries of movies and TV shows I would read to see if I actually want to watch them.

There was one about a science fiction/fantasy show that I actually don’t like very much, (Called Tales From the Dark Side) but a relative I live with does. That summary hit me hard in an area where I needed to be hit in. Even though I still don’t like the TV show, I still remember what the person who wrote that summary mentioned. You see, the person who wrote the summary didn’t just explain the plot of the episode, they also wrote their own opinions about it. Their opinions are what hit me hard.

The person described how sad it was that the main character lamented his mistakes so much that he wanted to go back in time to change them. The thing was these “mistakes” weren’t as bad as they looked to him. Actually, it is just a part of life. He may have not been able to marry the person of his dreams, but he was married. With a child. And a job. The whole point of the episode is to show how impossible it is to live when we’re stuck in the past. Not just a glorified past, but a past when petty mistakes have been made. Like with mine.

Do I think my life would be different if I went to a different college? Absolutely. Did I made the mistake of going to the college I did because I thought my friends would be there? Yep. I did. Yet, my mistake to go to the “wrong” college has opened my eyes to something I wouldn’t have known about: My health problems. The failure of these my college years caused my doctors, and myself, to reanalyze what was wrong with me medically. It lead to the answers I hoped and prayed for. I now know what went wrong with me and why. I may have made a mistake, but I am better for it. Much better for it.

As I start to move through my life and see what “could’ve been”, I can’t help but think about how sickly I could’ve been too. I was so attached to the area where I went to college (And still live in) that I needed something to open my eyes and show me how my life actually could be… if I moved away or got a job further away from the farm lands that I struggle to live and work near by. This new perspective on reality scares me badly, but it is also my life. No one else’s. There are no answers and no formal pathways for living my life like I used to think.

This is why I’m changing the way I see my life and what could’ve been my life. I’m going to be ok now, but I still need to keep myself healthy. I still need to keep focusing on salvaging anything from my college days to use for the future. Above all else, I need to stare my inferiority complex in the face and not let them drag me down anymore. I still have friends, just not the ones I wanted to go to college with. I am still loved, even if having a family of my own when I wanted it isn’t why I’m loved. I’m doing fine and I am successful at whatever I put my mind to.

Unless it is trying to grow a tomato plant in my house. Then I’m struggling again. *sigh*

 

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading.

Featured Image is by Brett Jordan on Pexels.com. Edited for use on my blog by me.