I've had a few

I have so many regrets, it's quite ridiculous. The 'what ifs' play over and over and over.

Most of them come down to fear. At key moments, when opportunities presented themselves, I was crippled by fear. I didn't act. Or I withdrew. Leaving me wondering just what direction my life would have gone in had I had the courage to act.

This is especially true for my early twenties. At that time, inside, I was still a nervous teenager, with no idea what I was doing and very aware of that. I was self-conscious to a damaging degree and made a complete dick of myself on a regular basis. And yet my life was going in a particular direction, a good direction. A fun direction.

Then I backpedalled.

And the rest of my twenties passed me by. Just floated away and I have no idea what happened to them. Suddenly, I was in my mid-thirties and settled. Settled, having never been unsettled. It's like a whole piece of my life is missing and it's because I was too young to have the nerve to just go get it.

But if someone said to me now that I could rewind, do it all again and change each and every one of those things, I wouldn't. When you get older, you get attached to things. Things that become very important. There are elements of my life now that I would never risk losing and I guess that's a good thing. These are things that outweigh all else. People mostly. They are that important.

And, yet, they are still just a part of my life overall. For all the years I have lived, they're technically a small part. So, even though I wouldn't rewind and risk losing those things, they don't make the regrets go away. They don't stop me wondering just who I could have been had I led my life differently.

I suspect I'll probably always have a hole there in my life. That hole is who I'm not, but could have been.