What If?

What if you've never had a mental "disease" and just suffered from what you'd learned about people, relationships and the world as a tiny child?

What if you suffer long, life-long guilt and shame not based on what others have done to you or what you have done to others, but on what you have done to yourself?

What if life is almost over and, as a kind of coda, you finally, with just a few more years to live, find out what you learned that was wrong, and correct it?

What if there is no way at all to remedy what you have inflicted on yourself during a long life?

What if you knew somehow from an early age that something was desperately wrong and had tried and tried and tried to get help and that help was not forthcoming, and it was your fault because the terror sealed your mouth?

What if at the end of your life you had to live with all this knowledge and understanding, without the slightest hope that anything could be corrected?

What if?

I really considered each of these statements, and everyone will answer each of these differently. I just can't get past the "what ifs." For me, I have learned and firmly believe, the yesterdays have happened, are past; and I can only move forward from here. Whatever information I had to base decisions on at the time, is what was there, all there was to go by, and hindsight is a luxury to use for the future. What has happened to me is done. All I have is today, and I might not make it to tomorrow to consider the "what ifs" or to regret. If tomorrow comes, take each moment as it comes and make each new decision in the moment, hopefully basing decisions on the current moment AND what have learned from the past, making better decisions.

Many of the things that have been proposed, these "what ifs", I would have to look to this moment in time, accept that these things have made me who I am, positives and negatives, but that I can control what I do about them from here and this point forward. I may not like what has happened in the past and I cannot predict the future, but what I do NOW is entirely up to me; it is all we really have and being aware is the first step.

I don't believe this is the response you were looking for to these possibilities or for discussion; I am very sorry for this! I just have wasted a LOT of time, energy, worry, and anxiety in my life on "what ifs." I hate for this to happen to someone else.

I think all that is what "life" is. No one has an easy/happy life all the time. Everyone is struggling to figure out who they are and what they're supposed to be doing, how to cope with this and that liability, illness, loss, etc.

I "wasted" about 15-20 years of my life due to me, how I was/was not brought up, defenses, symptoms, etc. I literally was "not there".

But that perception of those years is really just "another" perception, what "really" happened and its effect can't be known until the whole is played out. Checking out saved my life at that time so I could get to this "long" life. For all I know, the week after next I might meet someone who is "waiting" for me and save their life. Can't know that until the end.

For me.....we are all here to learn lessons and teach lessons...we may not always understand them but that is the scheme of it all.....I often think about what ifs too..

But hind sight is 20/20, and we can't change the should haves, could haves or would haves....

Tomorrow is a new day....start again...and try to be the happiest we can be...love and friendship is all that is true...........

Fresia ecapsulated what I was thinking in her very insightful response. I don't think I could have put it quite so eloquently but the intention is the very same and I couldn't put it any better

Greetings,

What if, indeed.

Have a good one.