You Didn’t Ruin Your Life — You Just Started Without What You Needed
💫 You Didn’t Ruin Your Life — You Just Started Without What You Needed
This is for anyone who lies in bed thinking, “I wasted my years. I should be further along by now. I ruined my life.”
You didn’t ruin your life. You started without what you needed and still somehow made it here. That matters more than you think.
If you’ve ever thought:
- “I wasted my 20s.”
- “I wasted my 30s.”
- “I should have my shit together by now.”
- “If I hadn’t chosen them, my life would be different.”
- “If I hadn’t drunk so much / stayed so long / believed those lies, I’d be somewhere else.”
Read this slowly:
You didn’t ruin your life — you just started without what you needed. And you did the best you could with what you had.
🧬 You Weren’t Irresponsible — You Were Unprepared
Nobody handed you:
- a manual for healthy love
- emotional regulation tools
- a nervous system reset button
- financial literacy and safety nets
- lessons on boundaries and self-respect
- genuine self-worth that wasn’t tied to being picked
What you did get was more like:
- “Don’t be so sensitive.”
- “Don’t make a fuss.”
- “Just be grateful it’s not worse.”
- emotional chaos
- mixed messages about love and safety
- adults who were in survival mode themselves
You weren’t “messing your life up”.
You were:
- self-soothing the only ways you knew
- choosing familiar patterns over unknown safety
- repeating what was modelled to you
- trying to belong
- trying not to feel alone
- trying not to feel the ache
That isn’t a moral failure.
That’s a resourcing problem.
💔 You Think You Wasted Time — But You Were Carrying Things No One Saw
People love to say:
- “You should be further by now.”
- “You should have a house by now.”
- “You should be married, sorted, stable by now.”
But did they factor in:
- the nights you cried yourself to sleep next to the wrong person
- the years you spent walking on eggshells around a narcissist
- raising kids alone while holding down everything
- the time it took to recover from emotional, physical, or financial abuse
- the brain fog from constant stress and hypervigilance
- the hours lost to addictions you used to survive your reality
You weren’t just “living your life”.
You were:
- surviving trauma
- healing without a map
- breaking patterns no one thanked you for breaking
- holding everyone else together
- trying to function with a frazzled nervous system
Of course it took longer. Of course you’re tired. Of course your timeline doesn’t look like theirs.
You were running the race with weights around your ankles.
⏳ You’re Not Behind — You’re Comparing Your Life to Their Head Start
It’s easy to feel behind when you compare yourself to people who:
- had stable, loving parents
- weren’t abused or manipulated
- didn’t start adulthood in debt
- never had to escape a dangerous relationship
- didn’t raise siblings or kids practically on their own
- had financial and emotional safety nets
You didn’t get a clean slate.
You started life with:
- emotional chaos
- survival patterns
- unhealed generational trauma
- zero cushion if things went wrong
And yet you still:
- kept going
- kept loving
- kept trying
- kept rebuilding
That isn’t failure.
That’s persistence.
🔥 You Didn’t “Stay Too Long” — You Left When You Were Capable of Leaving
Could you have left earlier?
Maybe. On paper.
But at the time:
- you didn’t know what you know now
- your self-worth was lower
- your brain chemistry was hooked on the trauma bond
- your body associated chaos with “home”
- your finances, safety or kids made leaving complicated and terrifying
- you believed their potential more than your reality
You didn’t stay because you were stupid.
You stayed because:
- you were loyal
- you were hopeful
- you were scared
- you were under-resourced
- you thought this was what love was
You left when:
- your nervous system couldn’t do it anymore
- your intuition got louder than your fear
- your children (or your future self) became your reason
- your soul finally said, “We’re done.”
That isn’t failure.
That’s timing — painful, messy, human timing.
🍷 You Didn’t “Waste Years Numbing” — You Were Trying Not to Drown
Sometimes you:
- drank instead of crying
- smoked instead of screaming
- scrolled instead of feeling
- hooked up instead of grieving
- worked 60-hour weeks instead of collapsing
- overate, undereat, obsessed, binged, avoided
You weren’t trying to destroy yourself.
You were trying to:
- turn the volume down on a nervous system stuck on high alert
- get through the night
- make unbearable feelings even slightly less loud
- function well enough to show up again tomorrow
Were those coping mechanisms ideal? No.
Were they what you knew at the time? Yes.
You can hold yourself accountable for change now, without endlessly punishing the version of you who was just trying to survive.
🌱 Nothing Was Wasted — It All Became Data
Every “wrong” turn gave you:
- data on what your body can’t tolerate anymore
- proof that your intuition was trying to talk to you
- clarity about what love is not
- boundaries you were never shown in childhood
- compassion for people who are still stuck where you were
- stories that will one day validate and save someone else
You didn’t waste:
- your 20s
- your 30s
- your 40s
- your relationships
- your chances
You collected:
- lessons
- scars
- red flag detectors
- self-respect
- depth
Now you get to use them consciously instead of bleeding from them unconsciously.
🧭 You’re Allowed to Begin Again at Any Age
You are not:
- too old
- too late
- too far gone
- too broken
You are:
- more aware than you used to be
- more resourced than you used to be
- more sober (in body, mind, or literally) than you used to be
- more protective of your peace than you used to be
And that makes you dangerous to every pattern that used to own you.
You’re allowed to:
- start saving now
- start healing now
- start resting now
- start training your nervous system now
- start choosing different relationships now
- start saying “no” now
- start building something new now
There is no expiry date on starting again.
💌 A Note to the You Who Thinks It’s Too Late
To the you who whispers:
“If I hadn’t wasted so much time, I’d be further.”
Here’s the truth:
- You were not wasting time.
- You were surviving time.
- You were surviving nights nobody knows about.
- You were surviving situations that took pieces of you.
- You were surviving thoughts you never said out loud.
And now?
You’re not just surviving.
You’re:
- questioning
- waking up
- setting boundaries
- learning
- unlearning
- choosing differently
That is not “nothing”. That is everything.
🌈 The Line to Remember When Regret Creeps In
When your brain says:
- “I ruined my life.”
- “It’s too late for me.”
- “Everyone is ahead of me.”
Remind yourself:
I didn’t ruin my life. I started without what I needed, and I still made it here. Now I get to build my life with what I know.
Your past is not a crime scene.
It’s a blueprint.
You are not behind. You are right on time for the version of you that’s arriving now.
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