Surviving Regret

I’ve been wondering for some time now if I’m the only one that feels as though I’m simply watching everyone else live their lives, while mine just seems to be in eternal limbo.

I guess that everyone feels this way at some point in their lives, but since my life completely changed in 2019, I feel as though the clock stopped. And I don’t know how to move on.

Trying to understand where it all went wrong

It truly is incredible how much life can change so unbelievably fast.

One day, you feel as though you have everything figured out, and the next, you wake up and you simply just can’t understand how you got here. You try and analyse where it all went so wrong. You review all the tiny factors that contributed to your current reality. However, there is no one right answer.

When you begin to piece things together you discover that every step you took, every decision you made, every word you spoke, were all inevitably taking you down a road you didn’t even realise you were on.

Perhaps if you had known, you might have made different choices.

Did my narcolepsy diagnosis cause me to make questionable decisions?

In reality, my life actually began to spiral at the end of 2018, but at that point, I believe it was still salvageable.

I was diagnosed with narcolepsy at the beginning of 2018, and to this day, I still wonder whether this played a part in the questionable decisions I made in the following months. I’m almost certain that I was suffering extreme side effects from the medications I was prescribed, and these would only be exacerbated in the following year.

I packed up my entire life and left the country

In 2019, the combination of the bad decisions I’d been making along with the side effects of the medications came to a head.

In two short days, I was forced to pack up my entire life. I quit my job, gave up my apartment, sold my car, left the country, and subsequently ended a 6-year relationship.

Most people in my situation would have probably cried, become depressed, or at least suffered some form of obvious, visible distress. Unfortunately, I’m not like most people; the normal human process doesn’t seem to be possible for me. It’s as though my brain is hardwired to simply focus on finding the quickest solution.

It’s a strange form of survival mode, but if I'm being honest, it’s probably more like denial. I never expected that it would take me 3 years to let the trauma of this experience finally sink in.

What if I can't move on with my life?

Everyone has regrets. It’s impossible not to live a life with some type of regret because, to paraphrase Robert Frost, the road not taken will always exist. The key to living a healthy life is to somehow be accepting of the choices you made and not dwell on what could have been.

My question is, what if you simply can’t? What if you just don’t know not only the next steps to take, but where you even want to go at all?

The hardest part in all of this is knowing that, although some things that led me to today were out of my control, the thing I most regret was probably the only one that was in my control.