wasted time.. perhaps:-)

Personally I now feel that I had to burn the first 44 years of my life to try and shed enough of the internal conflict to start again (although i spiraled out of control into depression for a long time
And that "wasted time" in my case had to happen. although I didn't know that at the time, but its liken it the phoenix raising from the ashes with a different mind set being better prepared to tackle same issues.

Naturally you don't change and perhaps what once mattered doesn't matter as much or I have found better ways to avoid, what ever it was that i had to waste that time to shed the past.