Fola’s Regrets and Journey to Self Forgiveness.

How do you live with yourself when you make a regrettable mistake? How do you handle the grief and the painful tugging at your chest? How do you walk without the cloud of disappointment over your head? How do you live life without regrets, and how do you prevent making stupid mistakes?

I made a mistake, one that caused my confidence to falter, lowered my self-esteem, and led to intense self-hatred. Regret is soul-crushing, knowing that everything went wrong because you made a decision without realizing the future consequences. The lack of foresight is despicable.

When people hate you, it’s fine—they’ll get over it. But when you hate yourself, that’s something else entirely. Self-hatred leads to neglect, a desire to hurt yourself, and profound unhappiness. It’s the saddest thing ever because no matter how many people tell you that it’s okay, you’ll never extend yourself such grace.

Forgiving others is so easy, but forgiving yourself is the most difficult thing to do. Your mind haunts you, replaying everything in your head, showing you what reality could have been if you made the right choices. You’re forever plagued, no matter how much you try to let it go. It’s always going to be there.

There is irony in this statement, but emotional pain is very physical. Have you ever been hurt to the point that you feel the pain in your throat, in your chest? Unlike a regular migraine, I can’t fix it with a painkiller and call it a day. Emotional pain and regrets have me searching for a way to feel this pain less, to become numb to my feelings.

Mistakes are a part of growth, but at the same time, some mistakes should not be made. We do things without rational thinking, on a whim, and blame immaturity. How convenient. No excuses. A mistake is a mistake.

But you know what? All these thoughts—very real and original thoughts—won’t just stop coming. Rather than drowning in the pathetic nature of your mistake, why not make efforts to fix it? If it’s something that cannot be fixed, you have to accept it and forgive yourself.

Forgiving yourself is the first step to healing, and it’s also the hardest step. Allow yourself to feel, learn from the mistakes, and forgive yourself. When you forgive yourself for the mistakes you made, nothing anyone says will hurt you. But know that it’s the hardest step. Some people die with their regrets because they just couldn’t forgive themselves. Even I, the author, have a hard time forgiving myself, and I so badly want to. But accepting that it’s something I need to do is also a step in forgiving.

If mistakes weren’t meant to be made, the vocabulary would not exist. That doesn’t mean making them and having regrets don’t hurt.