Dear Mom,

When I was a teenager, you told me that I too often surrounded myself with broken people. That I’d seek out friends who needed help. Who needed to be fixed. 

Did it ever occur to you that I was one of them? That I was broken? 

Today, I don’t feel broken anymore. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and I’ve come a long way. However, I do feel like I’m not entirely put together. Like there is still a chunk missing. Or a piece stuck on crooked. And I desperately want to fix it for myself. 

I desperately want to move on from this nagging feeling. My constant questioning. My state of self-disappointment that I seem to exist in. I don’t live in these feeling all of the time, but they can play a significant role in my life. 

I sat down this week to address these feelings. Specifically, my tendency to always wonder if things could be different. The big and the small moments. I danced with the idea of writing to you about my jealousy of others, which then after some research I discovered is really envy, but every time I started to write about it, I always seemed to circle back to regret. 

So, I’ve decided, it’s time. It’s time to stop tiptoeing around the topic of regret. I’ve mentioned it here before. I often bring it up and then quickly change the subject because it feels too big. 

I can’t keep avoiding it. And it seems I can’t properly address my issues without first unpacking the biggest one.

Seems there is no time like the present to focus on that pesky past, right?

Here I go…

No matter where I am in life. No matter how far I’ve come or how much I’ve accomplished or how content I am. I’m never living that far away from wondering how things could be. How my life could have gone differently. What if I had made a different decision? What if you had made a different decision? What if? What if? What if?

I’ve been thinking for days about what the cause of my regret is. What is inside of me that pushes me toward this feeling of questioning. 

My research tells me that regret is a healthy human response. That it’s normal to look back and wonder how things could have turned out. I’ve learned that younger people tend to regret actions. Wishing they hadn’t spent that money or dated that guy. And older people tend to regret inactions. Wishing they had taken the chance or gone on the trip.

So, I sat down at the computer to write down my regrets. Just a small list of actions and inactions that I’m still harping on. I figure if I can lay it all out in front of me, then maybe I can start connecting the dots and figure out what the common denominator is.

What if I had gone to Guatemala back in undergrad? That trip you wanted me to go on. That trip that I believe would have changed my life entirely. Just like the trip to Vietnam you sent me on as a teenager, I would have learned about the world and about myself and met the right kinds of people. What if I hadn’t listened to my boyfriend at the time who didn’t want me to leave for an entire summer at the start of our relationship? What if I had listened to my instinct instead? What if I had chosen myself and my future?

What if I had never gone to film school? I know what I gained from that choice. I gained an incredible group of friends who I still spend holidays with, and my kids call their ‘framily’. I gained the confidence to take the leap and move out to Los Angeles and try my hand at Hollywood. I gained knowledge about writing and the film and television industry. I also gained a ton of student loan debt that feels never-ending. I gained a severe inability to believe in myself after two years of intense criticism to my writing. I gained more scars as I lost whatever thick skin I had prior. This will be a moment that I will likely always wonder about. It’s a big crossroad in my life. A significant ‘what if’. But it’s also a ‘what if’ that I wouldn’t change, considering that I likely wouldn’t have met Jeremy if I hadn’t gone. 

What if I had broken up with my boyfriends sooner? Or, what if I had never allowed myself to be in unhealthy relationships to begin with? What if I had listened to my girlfriends who warned me and attempted to save me. 

What if I had opted for a degree that would have led to more financially stable job opportunities? What if I would have never moved back to Chicago, and then never moved back to LA, and therefore would have saved a ton of money in moving expenses and would have stayed in my rent-controlled studio apartment for longer and maybe now I’d be better off financially?

And this is where things get stickier.

This is why I avoid the topic of regret. It’s bigger than the moments I wish I could change. It’s bigger than my wishing I could find a time machine and go back to senior year of high school and tell that guidance counselor to do her job. It’s bigger than me wishing I could go back and call Dad for a ride home that night instead of getting behind the wheel and landing myself in the backseat of a police car.

All of these moments, all of these what ifs, all bring me back to more internal questions. What if I were more confident in my decision-making ability? What if I had stood up for myself? What if I had believed in myself? What if I had less self-doubt? What if I didn’t give up so soon? What if I had tried harder?

I think what is bothering me about this whole topic is that my regrets, when I go really deep, become personal digs about myself. Sure, I regret all the choices I mentioned above but I also regret being myself, or better yet not being myself. I regret turning into a version of myself who I didn’t like, and I didn’t want to be. And I can blame some outside forces. Say it was the fault of the boyfriend who was never going to actually love me for who I was. It was the fault of the best friend who only wanted to use my car. It was your fault for not so quietly suggesting I change my clothes or clean up my makeup or stop hanging out with people who you didn’t approve of. 

What do I regret most in life? Is it all the things I mentioned? Or is it really that I regret keeping myself in a consistently buzzed state to avoid reaching my fullest potential? Is it that I regret sabotaging my growth and truly believing that I didn’t have a right to succeed?

Do I, above all else, regret the person I was for the majority of my life. The shell of myself. The people pleaser. The yes woman. I regret all of the moments that led to my shrinking. All the moments that led to my giving up. 

I regret drinking so much.

I regret smoking for so long.

I regret starving myself to lose weight.

I regret letting him talk to me that way.

I regret letting him talk to me that way as well.

I regret letting all of the guys do all of the things. The belittling. The offending. The criticizing. The public humiliation. The push to change my physical appearance. The reminder that I wasn’t as pretty as my friends. 

I regret the friends. Not all of them. But some. 

I regret not standing up for myself and not standing up for others like me. 

I regret believing that I could sleep when I’m dead.

I regret assuming that I could live forever despite the torture I put my body through.

I regret living as if death was inevitable anyway.

I regret not telling you how I felt. Not telling you my secrets. Not telling you I’m sorry.

I regret being me. Not me today, rather me for my adolescence and the majority of college. I regret surrounding myself with people who pulled me down instead of lifting me up. I regret not saying no more often. Not saying no ever. I regret keeping my head in the sand.

I regret lying. I regret cheating. I regret allowing others to influence my decisions at a time in my life when I should have had full control.

So, now my question is, what do I do with this information and how do I grow out of it? Because, ultimately, I don’t regret the external moments the same way as the internal ones. And if I’m regretting being a version of myself, existing as me, then I’m still holding onto a self-hate that isn’t healthy. So, how do I let go of that? How do I move on?

What would you tell me, Mom? Would you tell me to be kinder to myself? Would you tell me that it was all your fault, and you should have been more aware of my pain? Would you tell me that I can’t live in the past and I need to separate myself from those years?

What would I tell my own kids? Probably that they must treat themselves with kindness and respect and patience. That we all do go through dark moments and that’s human. That’s normal.

I am quite aware that I can’t live in the past. That I must get over the baggage I have from my adolescence and early adulthood. And I know I have more to sift through when it comes to those years, but I also know that I am better now. I am a stronger version of myself, and I do have the power to recognize the growth. To measure the distance between. And I know what I’m really doing is avoiding letting go of her. Of that fourteen-year-old who thought alcohol would fix everything. Of that sixteen-year-old who was scolded by her boyfriend in front of all her friends in a crowded high school commons. Of that nineteen-year-old who was given no control over the biggest decision of her life. 

I know I’m afraid to let go of my past self entirely and I fear if I fix all of my cracks then I’m releasing her forever. And what scares me about that, is the idea that I still need her. That she is still a part of me. But it feels unfair to her. Like she’s been through enough already. She should be able to get some rest. To stop worrying. To stop questioning and doubting and second-guessing. She is exhausted. I am exhausted. 

After all of this work I’ve done to understand my regrets and where they sprout from, what I really want is to not regret this moment later. I don’t want to look back years from now and wonder what if I had dealt with this issue sooner? What if I hadn’t wasted anymore time? What if I had moved on and let go and allowed myself to live without the past playing such a significant role? 

What if I could simply live in the moment. In the present. 

What if I could live without regret?

I do know, that’s not possible. I do know that regret is healthy. That regret is common. What I need to do is live without the regretting of me. I need to live without regretting my past self. I can regret choices and decisions and roads and paths and all the big moments. I can’t continue to regret my core identity. I can’t continue to allow my regrets to dictate how I love myself. I need to find a way to separate me from the physical actions of life. I need to find a way to stop blaming myself for what happens and for what doesn’t happen.

I need to stop regretting having been broken. I need to stop regretting being unevenly fixed. I need to stop regretting my imperfections.

But what I really want is to start. To start focusing on rebuilding. To continue growing. To stand taller. To takes risks. To try new things. And to be happy. Happy with my present and my future, failures and missteps and awkward conversations included. 

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel