Do Overs

I recently listened to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. A young woman is in the

midst of a life review of sorts, and she flips through a book of regrets. It’s a painful exercise, but as she moves through the library, she regards this book differently. Her perspective continues to expand, and she can look at her life in new and more charitable ways.

This book had a moving effect on me. It invited me to think about some of my life experiences and decisions I might reconsider if I had an opportunity to. I haven’t lived with much regret, but one decision I made in my early 20s I wish I could do differently.

I saw a therapist when life was feeling particularly heavy, and I didn’t know how to move forward. I sat with this woman for one session. What she told me felt too big and overwhelming to be able to sit and face it with her. I didn’t go back. When I tried therapy eight years later, the new therapist basically told me the same thing. This time I recognized the issue was the same, and it was time for me to face it head on, which I did.

My regret is choosing to run away from my problem rather than sitting in discomfort. I wish I could have trusted the process. That I could have made space for the counselor to guide me through the hard stuff. If only I could have imagined then what I have experienced since those early days.  

I got there eventually, but how much needless suffering could I have spared myself if I had simply sat through the discomfort? Twenty-four-year-old Julie believed this is just the way it is. She would not believe that she would be able to manage such a shift in thinking and such stillness in her body.

Fifty-one-year-old Julie knows something different and is grateful every day for finally choosing to work things out and learn to trust herself again.

Reading made this reflection possible. Walking around in someone else’s story helps me understand my own better even when the circumstances look nothing alike.