Life could so easily have been so good. But I allowed myself to become so twisted that I was incapable of seeing that, or of enjoying it. I couldn’t see past all the shame and anger, to take the few small steps that could’ve righted my course. And now I can’t stop tormenting myself over what could’ve been, all those years ago. What should’ve been. I do it in my dreams, and then wake up with this gnawing sense of emptiness and absence, where a meaningful life should be.
I should be that person. I should be in that universe. I should’ve made those choices. But I didn’t. And there were reasons for that.
It’s just so tantalisingly close, that different reality. I want to somehow reach out and touch it. All it would’ve taken was the tiniest exercise of awareness on my part. To recognize the potential paths open to me. But I was trapped too deep in my own self-hatred.
And now it’s far, far too late. Decades too late. The number of paths open to me is tiny, and they all lead into the wilderness. And all I want right now is the chance to go back, and do things differently. I’m trapped in this limbo of my own creation, where every day feels the same, regardless of where I am or what I do.
But at some point it will come to an end. I believe that. Death will come, and this pain will end. And none of it will matter anymore. There’s hope in that.
9 comments
What you do right now matters. If youre not gonna off yourself in 10 years, thats 10 years of time you could do something with. If you spend your future regretting your past, then youre dead in the present time.
I encourage you to take a calculated risk. For me, my risk is going to college, despite being a felon. I might get to the end and not be able to get a job. But i dont want to die without trying.
Follow leads.
…Venture into the Wilderness, as you say…
Hey, that’s commendable. I just don’t have it in me at this point. At least not consistently. It’s a struggle to even force myself to complete the small amount of work I have. A large part of me just doesn’t care if it all falls apart. Because at least then it’ll be over. Which is stupid. But I’m not mentally strong enough to reason myself into trying.
Im sorry you find yourself at that point. Not trying to sound strange, but wish I could give you a hug
I appreciate the sentiment dude, genuinely.
Man, I could have pretty much written those words myself, so I know exactly where you are. I can’t say I torment myself very much about the way things should have been (not recently anyway), but I still find myself thinking about it more than is healthy, which isn’t great either, and I often wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it all, and this is happening more and more. Being a big sci-fi fan doesn’t help, with all those stories about alternate universes and all, but things could be worse too, in some other corner of the multiverse. Unfortunately, this is the universe I’m stuck in, so thinking “it could be worse” only goes so far for me.
Things could definitely be a lot worse, and I try to remember there’s people going through actual hell, rather than just the grey limbo I’ve created for myself. But it is very hard to be grateful for that, when you get daily reminders that life could actually be meaningful and positive, if only you hadn’t screwed up so badly.
Hey I’d like to join the one-wrong-turn club. It’s maddening to think how a wrong decision changed everything. But at the same time I “console” myself by saying that’s who I was and even if I was spared one catastrophe, I surely would’ve screwed up at a later date.
I guess what I’m saying is it does no good to imagine how much better things could’ve been, because if your choices were in character then this is where you would’ve ended up. You said you were blinded by self-hatred (which I can relate to), and you can’t be blamed for bad choices made in that state of mind.
I don’t know why some of us are cursed to waste our best years under a dark cloud, and by the time we wise up, well like you said it’s decades too late for those opportunities to ever come again. But I suppose, like a ship that’s been off course for years, it’s never too late to try to correct your course even if you’re hopelessly lost. Maybe there’s some satisfaction knowing that your last years are lived the right way.
So the conceit for me is that such choices would’ve led to fundamentally different life experiences, thereby significantly changing who I became. I really don’t think it would’ve taken much to send me on a drastically different course. Not saying that I’d never have screwed up for the rest of my life. But it took a long series of uninterrupted bad decisions fuelled by self-hatred, before I screwed up so thoroughly that it ruined the rest of my life. All it would’ve taken was one significant interruption in that. One moment of stepping back from the mindset I was locked in enough to reach out and really connect with someone. And I had multiple opportunities of people really reaching out and making the effort to try and connect with me. But either I was too in my own head to recognize that, or I took them for granted.
Blame/responsibility is a difficult question. I think I can be blamed as much as any 18-20 year old can for anything. I wasn’t self-aware enough to recognize who I was becoming, or the long-term consequences. But no one ever is. No one stands outside themselves and creates themselves from a neutral place. Everyone is caught up in the sea of emotions that dominates their lives, and they just follow the currents. Either no one is to blame, or we all are.
It’s hard to explain, but there’s certain things you do that colour everything that comes afterwards. Even when you’re not actively thinking about them, it’s like an awareness that casts a shadow over everything. And the only thing you can really do is run, because when you face the thing, you realise there’s no way of really living with it. Like emotionally, some things you just can’t accept, or integrate into your perception of yourself, without wanting to not exist anymore.
So I don’t think I can really “correct my course”, because that would require fully acknowledging the truth. And the truth feels unbearable.