Reflection is utterly depressing

I’ve been reflecting upon my life at ripe young age of 22 ,which is nothing new, but I’ve been doing it from a different perspective than usual. Usually through college I’d reflect by myself by putting on some piano music sitting with a chair at 2/3 am looking out my apartment window and just think about where I’m at and where I wanna be. I’d then say a million things I want to do and I’d rarely follow through with the plan because I was too busy drinking and having fun but not really the fun that was even worth it. Now post grad I stopped drinking for a long while to physically better myself as that had been a huge weak area most of my life. You see July last year I had a series of events collide and lead to an emotional mental breakdown which birthed a brand new person. Ironically, it’s the person I’ve been asking myself to be for last 4 years while in college but I’ve only now started to become said person through action fueled by anger sadness of my constant series of let downs and failure to live up to what I should’ve been.

See I look back to the last 4 years and see that I could’ve met so many people, join different organizations and communities, gone to more events than more stupid shit, lived abroad, idk do anything be engrained in the academia I liked. Instead I basically sat in an apartment and drank with 5 buddies from school for 2 years and then the final year that just extended to being at bars. Now these guys all had, still do, long term relationships and are quite satisfied with the path their going which will be your work a stable 9-5 live at home for a couple years move out get married stay in the state the whole nine yards. I love them they’ll always be my closest friends and I see them all the time and they’ve been with me at my lowest.

(I know this is long but I just need to get this down somewhere.)

Now though, I think well what if I just went out and stopped waiting up for them to join me what kind of person would I have been? Would I have done all the things I wanted to at the time, probably. Hence the title of said post. It’s aggravating knowing i messed up 4 critical years and I’ll never have that chance again. Ik people say well you know maybe if you didn’t go through that you wouldn’t have the drive you have now. Well sure but if I just did it even 10% right I would’ve been fine. Likely would’ve been able to live in nyc like I’ve always wanted to, likely would’ve been good at all the things I wanted to be good at by now. Instead I am now delayed at least 2 years if not more and by then I don’t even know what I’ll do.

It’s weird being the only friend that has plans or desires other than work a job and get married in 4 years. Not that I wouldn’t want to be married or working but here I am single not even knowing if I will meet a girl anymore, going to arguably be stuck in a job program for 2 years. But Isn’t there more things people want to do? Idk I’m just getting bored of now achieving something interesting and exploring the world and experience new things. Good thing is even though I have these thoughts I do not let my self let up and be complacent I am working hard on everything and learning and appreciating that and with that I know In a few years it’ll pay off but man it hurts to know that payoff could have been today if I had just listened to myself and worse off knowing there is a version of me that can never exist simply because i don’t have the time I would’ve had if I started earlier. That is something I hope I can learn to let go of.