First off, I’m fine, I’m in a good place, safe, etc. This is just kinda stream of consciousness, so sorry in advance.
I’ve lived my life a long time with a sense of fatalism that bordered suicidal, and I’ve lived a crazy life. Got kicked out young, was into crypto in the early 2010’s but didn’t have enough capital to do anything interesting, couch surfed, homeless shelters, all kinds of stuff. People would ask me if I had any regrets and I legitimately never did.
Now, I have lots of regrets…
I regret being stagnant basically since puberty, living like some Punk Rock Peter Pan, drinking every day for decades, doing nothing but playing video games and smoking weed and blasting myself into some other life any way I could. I existed like an astral projection of myself, too apathetic to brush my teeth or do anything productive with my body. Workout goals never resonated with me, so I never did that either.
I have the general regret I didn’t come out to myself sooner, but I find that wholly unproductive, so I don’t entertain it, but these other regrets, they are making the tapestry of the game plan to get myself back on track and i don’t have the luxury to ignore it.
I’m making great progress, counting my calorie intake, being active, practicing mindfulness, but the more I do and feel better about myself, the more that regret nags at me.
It Just kinda dawned on me while I was sitting here, I’m actually afraid to die now, made me think about what else had changed when I realized I regret so much now, and it didn’t make me who I was anymore than the trauma or anything else, and now I feel brain fucked.
I dunno what the call to action is here, any of y’all relate or have anything to say?
I’m not trans, just a fierce ally, so I don’t fully understand what you’ve gone through but it sounds really tough and you were trying to cope in one way or another.
I’m really happy to hear that you’ve started overcoming it and found some light within yourself. Please keep pushing forward. I don’t know you, but I’m sure the world is a better place with you in it.
Yeah I can definitely relate to that. I was extremely depressed in my teens and I did not really care about my body until I got HRT. Fortunately, I accepted myself a lot sooner, but I think it’s cause the thought that I am woman pushed through all the sludge in my brain and once it got to the front it wouldn’t stop screaming at me. I do wish I realized a lot earlier, when I was just a little kid. I had lots of signs and I also felt very lost until I realized why. Even though I like my life now, I feel like it would be a lot better if I had lived as my true self a lot sooner.
I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!!! Being scared to die means you’re living a life worth experiencing!! Which is wonderful and I’m proud of you for that because I very much can relate.
There’s a thing called ‘living amends.’
Basically, when you go through your day you try to make life better for other people. Maybe it’s just letting someone else get a seat on the bus, or being patient with an overworked employee. It could be givign a beggar enough for a meal, or buying them food.
I call that philosophy “Altruistic Hedonism”, and is one I’ve lived by for a long time. Basically make life as pleasurable for as many people as possible and life gets better for all of us. In my view “selfish hedonism” is a root cause of many people’s dissatisfaction in life. Just look at black rock investing talking over a majority of rentals in the US. Make everybody miserable and make life worse for everyone so you can feel pleasure from a slightly larger number in a computers memory somewhere.
There are gray areas of course. If you’ve ever meet someone going through a twelve step program that got to the make amends part that randomly came into your life to apologize again and end up doing more harm than good, but at least THEY feel better about it.
I absolutely understand having regrets about how you’ve spent your life. I often wonder if how happy I am today is only because of all the years I wasted trying to find myself. My sense of identity used to fluctuate a lot and it took until just this last year to truly know who I am and truly feel like myself. The sense of wasted time sticks with me though, and I try my best to silence that voice when it rears its head.
For me this is all wrapped up in my struggles with addiction and failing post secondary education too. Now that I’m sober, I’m transitioned and feel happy about my body for once, and want to go back to school I keep looking back and trying to forget out why I couldn’t just have been like this 10 years ago.
But for what its worth being happy today was worth all the pain of getting here. I try my best to be excited about whats to come tomorrow instead of focusing too much on the past.
I went through a very similar situation which I think is very common for transgender people. You were going through a very deep depression and you faced down death and learned not to fear it.
When people tell me that I’m brave for coming out, I like to use the analogy of a protagonist in a horror movie having to do something really scary and terrible to escape from the killer. In a way, it’s not really that brave because there’s not really any choice, because the choice is do the hard thing or die. Anyone would do the hard thing in that situation.
When I decided to do the hard thing rather than face death, I had been drinking myself to death, playing video games every free second of every day. Anything to distract myself from my depression. You’re not alone in feeling that way, but I’m glad you’ve done the hard thing and come out the other side. You’ve done something that many depressed people fail to do – confront your demons, improve your life, and live well.
It sounds like things were more hardcore for you, I’ve never had to be in a homeless shelter or anything. I can definitely relate to a lot of this though, just passing the time aimlessly with video games and drugs, not caring enough to do anything productive, being apathetic about life itself until just recently. I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time not developing any useful skills or anything, but at least I’m relatively young. That’s all I have to say, but yeah, I hope we’ll all be okay.
Seems a very common experience for those suffering from gender dysphoria to feel like they merely “passed through life” but didn’t really live or engage. Whether that takes the form of numbness, apathy, or recklessness, I guess varies from person to person.
But yes it’s amazing what giving a damn about your life and body will do.
I’m staring at 40 soon and not even fully out yet. I consider the time from age 18 to my realization to be “lost years”. I absolutely regret and mourn for what could have been, if I had really lived instead of always being depressed and dead inside, with no sense of identity.
Then again since beginning my transition I’ve legit become like a teenage girl. Not intentionally, it just happens, discovering all these new things. Trying to find my style, whereas I never cared before. In a way it’s almost like getting a second chance at life, and that’s a beautiful thing, even if I can never go back and change my mistakes.
Maybe it’s like any grief, you have to go through all the stages, to come out the other side and appreciate what was, without being weighed down by it. I’m not quite there yet, but the farther I get along my transition and toward my goals, I can feel myself overcoming the grief/regret.
I really relate to this as a newbie. I’m feeling a lot of the same types of regrets about how reckless and self defeating I had been to myself. Before I accepted this, I didn’t give two shits about my body. Very active addiction for most of my life to try and “cope with life”
Now I realize why I did what I did. I had no connection to what I saw in the mirror. Body is a temple? Fuck that shit - I’ve always hated this body.
Now I realize I can change it to what I want it to be and I regret all the wasted years of hating myself without knowing why.
Regret isn’t productive. It only steals energy from your new, good life. It occupies your processing power and slows your progress. Don’t think what you could have done differently. Think what you will do differently. Abolish the illusion of beginning again. Release yourself from suffering.
I relate! I tried to come out at 16. 26 now! 🤠
This is called Existential Dysphoria and it’s kind of a bitch, yeah.
We lived life more carelessly because of how it felt to be in the wrong body. Me personally, it was boring. I just played video games 24/7 in my parents attic. Yep, feel like… Shit, life matters now. And the plus side is I can think more strategically. I’m learning all these new skills not just about how to be female, but how to think of myself as a strong young woman and set my life up to put myself in a good position. I have to be careful, I can’t just give up on things and people, or myself.
Some people experience that they don’t like to look back on their past and think about it in this new context. I do, personally. My Mom told me the sweetest thing. That she wanted a daughter and a son, and she got both. And she was nervous about having a little girl rather than a little boy, because little boys are rambunctious and girls often play with dolls. And now I have those experiences of being rambunctious and being the physically strongest person in the room, and the creativite perspective on life, born out of the desperation you described. I think that you will reckon with these realizations and land on your feet too. Keep that up, taking care of yourself will shake out some more of these icky feelings, but mindfulness provides the frame of mind to notice them and work with them.
