Most of these I have made peace with and addressed in my life now, but historically, these have been my biggest regrets:
Becoming addicted to pornography and masturbation in my early teens and staying addicted throughout my 20s. I have been sober for years now, and for me, it was only possible through working the SLAA[1] program. I never actually knew it existed until a therapist suggested it to me; I wish it had been easier to find, but unfortunately whenever I would search for resources in overcoming pornography addiction, I would only ever really find places like r/NoFap.
On the one hand, I have spent more than half of my life addicted to pornography. On the other hand, I now have the gift of potentially being able to spend more than half of my time on this earth sober. The glass is definitely half full for me on this one.
Not learning how to dance until my 30s. I was once made fun of for dancing at a party as a young child (<5yo maybe) by my mother and a friend of hers, and that led to me being completely terrified of dancing until last year. I would get very angry and ashamed whenever I was in a situation where dancing was involved, and just generally feel not-good and attacked whenever somebody who loved me wanted to dance with me. I picked up swing dancing last year and now dancing is one of the most joyous activities in my life, and you can usually find me out cutting a rug on a Wednesday night.[2]
Being a lousy big brother to my one younger brother. This one probably hurts me the most and I still have not been able to forgive myself for it. Funnily enough, my younger brother loves me very much and we have a good relationship now, but when I think about all the ways I failed him when we were younger I just lose it emotionally. Working on this in therapy currently.
Not taking care of my body in my teenage years and 20s, and especially wasting all that free extra T[3] when I was going through puberty. I wish I could go back in time and drag myself to the gym when I first hit puberty! I do a wide range of physical activities now including lifting and I have a body and the kind of mass I never would have dreamed of before, but sometimes I like to imagine what I would have looked like now if I had started 20 years ago. Oh well, I can always see what I look like in 20 years' time!
[1]: My stubborn younger self would have written this due to the vaguely religious overtones of the 12 steps, but I'm glad that as a still-non-religious adult I was able to get out of my own way on this one and just focus on doing what I needed to do to get better
[2]: This is also how I found probably my most important adult friend group after the age of 30!
[3]: I will probably hop on TRT when I'm older and my T levels go down, so maybe I will get to experience something like that later in my life after all
Becoming addicted to pornography and masturbation in my early teens and staying addicted throughout my 20s. I have been sober for years now, and for me, it was only possible through working the SLAA[1] program. I never actually knew it existed until a therapist suggested it to me; I wish it had been easier to find, but unfortunately whenever I would search for resources in overcoming pornography addiction, I would only ever really find places like r/NoFap.
On the one hand, I have spent more than half of my life addicted to pornography. On the other hand, I now have the gift of potentially being able to spend more than half of my time on this earth sober. The glass is definitely half full for me on this one.
Not learning how to dance until my 30s. I was once made fun of for dancing at a party as a young child (<5yo maybe) by my mother and a friend of hers, and that led to me being completely terrified of dancing until last year. I would get very angry and ashamed whenever I was in a situation where dancing was involved, and just generally feel not-good and attacked whenever somebody who loved me wanted to dance with me. I picked up swing dancing last year and now dancing is one of the most joyous activities in my life, and you can usually find me out cutting a rug on a Wednesday night.[2]
Being a lousy big brother to my one younger brother. This one probably hurts me the most and I still have not been able to forgive myself for it. Funnily enough, my younger brother loves me very much and we have a good relationship now, but when I think about all the ways I failed him when we were younger I just lose it emotionally. Working on this in therapy currently.
Not taking care of my body in my teenage years and 20s, and especially wasting all that free extra T[3] when I was going through puberty. I wish I could go back in time and drag myself to the gym when I first hit puberty! I do a wide range of physical activities now including lifting and I have a body and the kind of mass I never would have dreamed of before, but sometimes I like to imagine what I would have looked like now if I had started 20 years ago. Oh well, I can always see what I look like in 20 years' time!
[1]: My stubborn younger self would have written this due to the vaguely religious overtones of the 12 steps, but I'm glad that as a still-non-religious adult I was able to get out of my own way on this one and just focus on doing what I needed to do to get better
[2]: This is also how I found probably my most important adult friend group after the age of 30!
[3]: I will probably hop on TRT when I'm older and my T levels go down, so maybe I will get to experience something like that later in my life after all