Sucks. 30 years later, I still have thoughts and regrets about a gf I had when I was 18. She was very cool. In those days I was very much a hippie and so was she. She dumped me for a guy who had a bag of cocaine and a motorcycle. A couple years later I met, then married my present wife. She was not a hippie and I adapted to her, not the other way around. I sometimes miss the Bohemian life I could have led and did not.

Then I realize that I love my wife. She and I are as close as partners could be. (With the one secret you all know about.) We have amazing children. We have the same interests and live comfortably with the differences.

It has not been the life I wanted or expected when I was 18, but it has been pretty darn good all-in-all.

Don't get too hung up on what was, or what could have been. Try to enjoy the moment when you can, and have a hopeful expectation of some goodness in the future. Who knows what that might be. Just don't miss it because you are too stuck in your headful of memories.

Bumper sticker: Wherever you go, there you are