Regret is a frustrating thing. I, like everyone else, try not to act in ways that I will regret. I also try not to regret those choices or events which have already taken place and have no hope of being rewritten. In the ascent into adulthood, though, your past up until that moment is ripe with mistakes you made, people you hurt, words you said that were meant to wound. When you grow out of teenage-hood and begin to see the consequences of your actions, and realize that life and relationships are complex and nuanced things — how can you not regret every single choice you made when you thought how you felt was the axis the world spun around?
This is why regret is so challenging. You don’t want to have it, but it’s impossible not to. It’s not logical, either. I often regret going to college right out of high school, instead wishing I took more time to figure out what I really wanted first. Was eighteen-year-old me supposed to know that waiting was an option? Or did I, as anyone would, simply follow the paths of my peers and wishes of my family, aching to fit in and belong? Further, does understanding that logic stop me from regretting it well into adulthood? No, of course not.
Looking back, I can also understand that a lot of my behavior as a young girl, especially lashing out, stemmed from me experiencing a sudden loss and not receiving the emotional support I needed. If you were to point to a fourteen-year-old girl, who was angry, resentful, combative, and rising and crashing from one emotional high to the next, I would feel empathy and understanding towards her. I would be able to see the way her life sculpted her to be this way. Yet I can’t see myself ever being at that point with my own younger self.
When I was young, and even when I was too old to use “when I was young” as an excuse, I hurt people. I sabotaged friendships and relationships for no other reason than I was selfish and trying to get from people things they could never give me. I was mean, and hurtful, and, convinced no one could ever love me, chose to push people away before they could wound me first. I missed out on so many wonderful things in my life from fear, hurt, and ego.
It’s difficult to reconcile the person you are now with the person you were then, and to convince others that you’ve changed and grown. Often, especially in those relationships that were left behind, the other person can only ever see you as who you were and how you hurt them. There are so many people I wish to love again, people I wish I could apologize profusely to and explain that it wasn’t them, it was me, projecting all my messy emotions onto them to try to heal myself. There are so many paths not taken, relationships not explored, adventures not experienced, that at times this regret can become soul-crushingly painful.
Ultimately, you can’t argue with the fact that everything you’ve done in your life up until now is permanent ink in your story — there is no rewriting history, no righting your wrongs. Life is a meaningless thing, with no predetermined path or fate, and we get out of it only what we put in. At some point, the past and who you were needs to submit to the present and who you are, and often that means accepting that certain people will never be in your life again the way they once were, and that you played a role in hurting the people you loved, whether intentional or not. Regret can haunt us until we break, but only if we let it.
Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Apologize to the people you hurt, even if it was ten, fifteen years ago. When people apologize to you, embrace it. People don’t need to let you back into their lives and you don’t need to let people back into yours. Just apologize, reconcile, and keep moving forward.