I wish I had taken more advantage of things in college. Like getting to know my professors better. And paying more attention to all the cool places/learning experiences I had access to when I studied abroad in college, rather than just focusing on where I was going to go with friends to party that night.
I wish I hadn't gone to my friends' house after school the day my brother died. If I had walked home with him, he wouldn't have gotten hit by the car and killed. I wonder often about what he would be like as an adult. I also have carried a lot of guilt over the past 30+ years and know that my mom blames me in part for his death.
I'm so sorry you are carrying that guilt around. hugs
oregonpachey I am so sorry. This is so unfair. I know your mom was hurting at the time but blaming a young child like that is cruel. It isn't your fault.
Like others have expressed, I think I have fewer regrets and more what ifs about major decision points. What if I didn't go to law school? What if I didn't move to SoCal? What if I didn't buy my 1st condo at the height of the 2006 market?
My only real regrets relate to spending more time with my parents before they passed. I would usually go up and visit them during Columbus Day weekend, but in 2011 I didn't since we were planning to go up there for both Thanksgiving and Christmas that year. My dad ended up passing in early November that year and my mom's dementia took an immediate turn from mild to moderate-severe. If I could go back and have one more weekend of all of us together and healthy I would.
I wish I had pushed back at my parents more in HS when my mom insisted I had to take Spanish when I wanted to take German. My first year of Spanish was taught by an inexperienced teacher and the class was so awful (for so many reasons) and it turned out because of my job later on German would have been more useful. I also have several German friends so I'd actually be able to speak it with them now and practice as an adult.
I wish I had taken the semester at sea in college. I couldn't justify the cost for classes that were basically all electives, but damn it would have been cool.
I wish I had gone on the trip to China and Tibet with my karate class. It was another "can't justify the cost" thing. I hadn't really done much international travel at that point in my life, and the cost was about double what I was expecting. But it really was a once in a life time trip and included getting to train with Shaolin monks. I stopped training the following year, again for lots of reasons, and so it's not a thing that I'll ever have the opportunity to do again.
When I was in my last year of college, I had the opportunity to apply for a new, 5th year masters program. I had been part of the pilot program that “fed” in to that program but at the time I needed to apply I was just focused on graduating, getting a job, and moving back to my hometown. Fast forward a few months (before graduation) and I met my (now) DH who had 2 more years of his own grad program. It was too late to apply for the program, and I was even more frustrated when I was told by the advisor that I would have been accepted as the main prerequisite was to be in the other program. 20+ years later and I still don’t have a masters degree.
The other one I think about a lot is when I took my very ill father to buy a birthday card for my mom. I should have asked him to pick out a birthday card for me, as my birthday is 2 weeks after my mom’s birthday. I hesitated, and ultimately never said anything while we were out. My dad passed 4 days before my birthday.
starlily I’m sorry for your experience. Thanks for the reminder on this. I am looking at going six hours away for a week to visit my dad (whose prostate cancer is flaring back up) with my sister and our kids. Along the way, we would also bring an aunt to see her brother/my uncle, who is in an “it’s-only-downhill-from-here” situation. She has no other real way to see him but us facilitating it (the last time she saw him was a year ago when I made it happen). The timing pretty much could not be worse for me with regard to multiple things hitting for work, so I have hesitated, but even if I spend a significant portion of the time working from the hotel, and dumping my kids on my sister, we’re going.
Before DH and I met, I lived in City A. He lived in City B.
We met randomly one night when visiting (different) friends in City C.
I'm happy, but I often wonder what my life would have looked like if any of the series of choices/events that lead to our meeting hadn't occured. I can't even fathom it, lol.
I am so envious of all of you who don't have a long list of do-overs! I don't have regrets as in, on my deathbed I'm not going to be bitter about all the things I got wrong over my life. I think they have mostly led me to a good place - I am very happy right now - but they have caused a lot of heartache and strife that I didn't really need to experience. If I could do over basically my whole life from age 17ish to 31 that would be excellent.
One of the biggest is that I wish that I had gone to a different college and that that college had been in Chicago. I had a lot of fun in college and the location was beautiful, but I could have gone to a far more academically rigorous school and probably learned more and had better experiences to prepare me for my future. Going to school out of state also put me on a path to never move back "home" to Chicago (I'm from the suburbs) and that meant never living near my family again. In my alternate life that I imagine, I would never have left Chicago and my family probably wouldn't have moved away from me so we'd all be there, enjoying life together, instead of spread across the country. There were multiple times that I tried to find a job in Chicago and it never worked out, but had I gone to college there I probably would have made connections that would have helped with that. I am happy where I live now, but I think I would have been just as happy there PLUS my family would be nearby.
I never should have dated my XH, let alone married him. I should have followed my heart and become a counselor with my psychology major instead of worrying about money and going into HR instead. I partly blame my spendy XH for that because at least I had the foresight to know that I was going to have to fully support myself financially and not rely on a partner to allow me to take a lower paying job. I should have prioritized studying abroad - I always wanted to but didn't think I could afford it. I should have stopped going to college at 19 like I wanted to and backpacked across Europe - again, I didn't think I could make it work financially but I think it would have been fine in the end AND I wouldn't have wasted as much time taking classes for a theater major that I never finished.
I am very glad that I am married to my H, I like where I work and live, and my life is overall good. So maybe none of that would be the case if none of the above had gone the way it did. But I still think I'd make different choices in hindsight if I had the chance to make them again. If my H and I were meant to be, we would have met somehow anyway.
My therapist keeps telling me to read this book, lol.
I wonder what would have happened if I never married my H, or if I just generally had not tied myself down when I was so young (met at 23, engaged at 24, married at 25, @pregnany at 26).
I wonder this too. I am generally happy, but I wonder what life would be like if I had not jumped into that stuff so quickly.
I also wonder what life would be like if we hadn’t had a second kid. No regrets, because DS2 is a light in my life, but I am curious how we would feel financially with only one kid.
shortstax, that is very similar to me and my H! Only we were both in City C for work. And I almost didn’t end up on the project that sent me there. Life, man…
Post by 1confused1 on Jun 13, 2022 19:57:57 GMT -5
I wish I would have divorced my XH sooner.
I wish I could have found some way to keep the house after the divorce. It was my dream house, the mortgage was less than what I am paying in rent and the space would have been so nice now that my kids are older.
Post by underwaterrhymes on Jun 13, 2022 20:44:49 GMT -5
I don’t have any big regrets. I admit to being curious about what would have happened with my career if I hadn’t turned down the shore-side recruiting coordinator position I was offered with Disney when the cruise line was first getting started back in 1999.
But there are so many other cool things I wouldn’t have done if I had taken that opportunity and I likely would have never met my husband, so I’m not curious enough to put it on my do over list.
I was a college athlete. I chose a school that recruited me and had a rigorous pre-med program with a very high acceptance rate to med school.
I ended up hated the college I went to despite loving playing my sport, and switch majors from pre-med to nursing and psychology with a minor in political sci. I took the LSAT years later but never went to law school. I'm in grad school now for a different degree, and wish I had done so years ago.
Regret is a big word. I think I've grown and learned and everything is part of my life journey. I didn't know better to regret some decisions I've made. I can maybe say I wish I had better insight or confidence in my youth, but happy I ended up where I am now.
I have no regrets and only two life choices (where to go to college and first job out of college) that may have slightly changed my future. And while I chose not to have kids, I think I can guess how my life would have been with them.
Maybe I'm the type of personality that rationalizes all my decisions in hindsight as being the way things would end up anyway.
I thought this thread might be more about how I wished I was braver and did a bungee jump in New Zealand. I might need to get tipsy and first try the Vegas Stratosphere fall thingy. (I have gone sky diving once, strapped to an expert.)
I am curious how my life would have gone if I hadn't married my first husband. I had many doubts, but was in loveeee and you can conquer anything when in love! That's obviously not true and I had a few isolating, miserable years with him. However, without him I don't think I would have ended up at the same grad school, at least not with the same timing, and wouldn't have met my current H! I'd never want to give that up, but if I could just look at the synopsis of what would have happened otherwise that would be cool.
I wish I didn’t beat the shit out of myself when DS was born trying to breastfeed him. I should have given up so much earlier.
Same. I basically cried in pain every time I tried to feed/make food for DS for the first 3.75 months of his life. (The first 2 breastfeeding and the 1.75 after pumping.) I should've given up at 1 month. My health is just as important as making sure my kid is fed. No one ever said those words to me when I was struggling and in pain.
This one night in college we threw a party. A guy came who me and my roommate had both had crushes on. Towards the end of the night, he was clearly into me. He asked if I'd like to go to the football game the next day and my roommate said "oh, we don't do football games." I held back on correcting her and being like "oh, I'd love to" because she liked him too. Me and the guy never went out.
The next week I met the guy I dated nearly the rest of college. While I don't regret any of the great sex we had, he was not good (VERY NOT GOOD) for me emotionally. And my roommate tried to sleep with him (for which I blame them both)! Dude!
Anyway, it's a very sliding doors moment for me. Would I have been spared that heartache? The damage to my self esteem? The challenges I had trusting people? Would I have learned to have casual relationships and/or trust myself more to cut things off when I could see they weren't good for me? I stayed with my long term college boyfriend years after our relationship expiration date because I felt I had to because it had been so tumultuous so surely that meant if we were together it's because we'd been tested by fire! 🙄
I've made other bigger mistakes for sure, but that's what popped in my head.
I would love to be able to try different choices just to see what happens, but I'm not sure I'd want to live any of these lives.
What if I'd played up my appearance, and dated a lot more, or even gone into modeling? I was always so shy and reluctant to really do anything with my looks.
What if I'd tried harder in school, and become an academic who got to explore her ideas in a public way?
What if I'd stayed with architecture or graphic design? I think design is where my most "flow" experiences come from.
What if I'd never married *either* husband or had kids. Who would I be then? I'm really curious, even though my husband is great, and my kids are so integral to my life.
I think my only real regret is leaving Chicago, where my chosen family was so very close. Chicago was where I was living my best life. I also think my kids would have been happier without all the moves that came after, although in that scenario, DD2 might never have been born. And I definitely wouldn't have seen my dad nearly as much before he died.
What I love about The Midnight Library, though, is the message that no matter what you do or who you become, you will have the same emotional life available to you. It's not about the fame or the money you might accrue; living a full life is just about the living, and how you chose to experience each day.
Post by starburst604 on Jun 14, 2022 10:04:12 GMT -5
Another thing I think about is what if I had married my ex-FI. I would have been so, so unhappy. Would I have come to my senses before having kids with him? What would have become of my life? While I regret the whole of that relationship, I do know that I wouldn’t have applied for my current job had I not moved in with him. The location wouldn’t have been doable where I lived before that. That job has really been pivotal in my life, over 20 years in!
But I often have dreams where I am with him, married to him or something, and I’m so confused wondering why I am there, where is my H and my real life? How am I going to get away from him? That relationship is clearly a core experience that my subconscious returns to a lot. In fact, the guy I mentioned previously in this post that I wonder about, I turned down for a date because I’d started dating ex-FI. So I guess I wonder what path my life might have taken if I hadn’t done that. I knew from the start I wasn’t seriously attracted to Ex-FI, I was just lonely.
I consider my life a pretty charmed and lucky life, so it’s hard to pick apart the choices that led here. Though lately I’ve been thinking about random things, like wishes to go somewhere, be different personality-wise, “when I’m in college…”, or hair color or clothes, and I think I’ll do that when I’m younger and then realize you can’t BE younger again. Maybe I’m trying to live vicariously through my children.
I was a pretty risk-adverse, meek person until I was on my own after college, (and some people would say I’m still not a risk taker, Ha!) I wonder what trajectory my life would have taken if I’d chosen to take the last minute offer during a college summer to do a specialty internship across the country in DC. I already had my summer housing in place in the college town and financially it would have been a lot, and so I decided, with feedback from my parents and boyfriend, to not go. I would have met different people, likely not stayed with my boyfriend, possibly taken a different specialty on my profession, lived elsewhere more… Same with a summer study abroad trip, I was the only one in my class to not go at some point during my program, and they STILL talk about that trip!
Post by DotAndBuzz on Jun 14, 2022 12:55:19 GMT -5
cville I have a 'sliding doors' type of situation too.
All through college (literally all 4 years) there was this guy. Dining Hall Boy, aka DHB, as may friends and I called him, because we often saw him freshman year in our dining hall. His major was similar to mine, we had lots of classes together/would pass walking to and from the buildings, etc. Our circles of friends were close, but never quite intersected, so I never actually met him, or even had any reason to say a single word to him, but there was *something* between us. Like, crazy palpable chemistry. Every time I saw him, we'd just stare at each other. Like we each wanted to meet/were interested, but never had a reason to.
I started dating H in the middle of our sophomore year, but still this guy and I still had ridiculous chemistry whenever we saw each other. He popped up on my FB feed a few years back - we both liked and commented on a mutual college friend/acquaintance's post. Through some light Facebook stalking via his totally public profile, lol, I found out he's living in my hometown, working in H's 2nd choice of specialty field (H had narrowed it down to 2 choices, what he does now, and what this guy apparently does). It's kind of weird to think about how if I'd not gotten together with H/figured out a way to actually speak to this guy, it's possible that I'd have a similar life, just with a different person, in my hometown. Or we could have had one night of great sex and moved on, lol.
But maybe in some parallel universe my 18 year old self got up the nerve to say something to him, lol.
Post by wanderlustmom on Jun 14, 2022 13:14:14 GMT -5
I regret not playing a sport in high school. I was okay at tennis and should have played. I know it would have helped my confidence and made me less boy crazy. Instead I started at 46. I also think it would have helped my body image. I see my 15 year old now, she’s been swimming her whole life and she’s very confident with a good body image and she’s not boy crazy. She also has a great dad and I did not
I wonder what it is like not to live most of your life - late high school til now - as an overweight person. Would I have tried different things? Would people have responded to me differently? How would it have changed things?