You're lying in bed at 2 AM, scrolling through old photos on your phone. There's that picture from college—you with actual friends, at some party where everyone looks genuinely happy. Or maybe it's from that semester abroad when you felt alive for the first time. Could be from your early twenties when you had that job with potential, before everything went sideways. Your thumb hovers over the screen, and that familiar weight settles in your chest.
*That was it*, the voice whispers. *That was your shot, and you blew it.*
This is regret in its purest form—not just wishing things had gone differently, but the bone-deep conviction that you had your moment and it's gone forever. You've built an entire narrative around this "wasted era," turning it into the definitive proof that you're fundamentally behind, fundamentally screwed.
Here's what's actually happening: You're using one period of your life as evidence for a story about permanent failure. Your brain has taken what feels like your peak moment and convinced you it was also your only moment. Every day since then becomes further proof that you're in decline, that you missed your window, that everyone else is moving forward while you're stuck replaying the same tape.
The regret feels so rational because it's built on a half-truth. Yes, that time probably was significant. Yes, you might have made different choices. But your mind has turned a chapter into the entire book, a season into the whole year. It's convinced you that life works like a video game—you get one golden period to level up, and if you don't maximize it, game over.
This narrative is particularly vicious because it feeds on itself. The more you believe your best days are behind you, the less energy you invest in your current days. Why try when you've already missed your chance? The story becomes self-fulfilling, creating the very stagnation it claims to explain.
But here's what the regret is actually telling you: That era mattered because you felt alive then. You felt possibility. The ache isn't really about the specific time period—it's about the distance between who you were then and who you are now. You're mourning not just lost opportunities, but a lost version of yourself who believed things were possible.
Society loves to sell us the myth of the crucial window. Your college years, your twenties, that first job out of school—we're told these are make-or-break moments that determine everything. It's bullshit designed to create urgency around products and services, but it seeps into your bones anyway. You internalize the timeline and measure yourself against it, forgetting that most people's lives are messier and less linear than the story suggests.
The hardest part about this kind of regret is that it masquerades as wisdom. "I'm just being realistic about my mistakes," you tell yourself. But there's nothing realistic about believing one era defines everything. That's not wisdom—that's trauma dressed up as insight.
Your "wasted" era isn't evidence that you're behind. It's evidence that you're human. Most of us have a period we look back on with this mixture of fondness and frustration. The difference between people who stay stuck and people who move forward isn't that some avoided mistakes—it's that some learned to see their entire life as workable material, not just one golden chapter.
The version of yourself you're mourning? He's not gone. He's buried under years of disappointment and self-judgment, but the core of what made that time feel alive is still in you. The curiosity, the willingness to take risks, the belief that things could be different—these aren't age-dependent qualities you lose. They're muscles that atrophy from disuse.
Right now, your job isn't to fix everything or make up for lost time. Your job is to stop using the past as evidence against your future. That means sitting with the regret without letting it drive the bus. Feel it, acknowledge it, but don't let it narrate your story.
Start here: Write down what specifically you miss about that era. Not the circumstances, but the feelings. The sense of possibility, the energy, the hope. Those feelings aren't trapped in the past—they're qualities you can cultivate now, in this moment, regardless of your age or situation.
Then ask yourself: If someone you cared about was stuck in this same regret spiral, what would you tell them? The compassion you'd naturally extend to a friend—that's exactly what you need to start extending to yourself.
Your best era isn't behind you. It's not ahead of you either. It's right now, waiting for you to stop looking backward long enough to notice it.