The Regret
2026.
It was the year that created unforgettable moments and changed the way I thought — or perhaps I should say, it gave me back a small part of my mind. It was a year filled with events whose threads stretched from the past, continuing to weave themselves into my present.
Something strange happened. New emotions were born, old ones came back to life, and feelings I thought had disappeared returned once again – whether painful or joyful. This year carried so much sadness. It piled up my emotions, my thoughts, and my awareness until I felt as if it finally released them all in one harsh blow, forcing me to wake from a sleep that had lasted for years. I still don’t know what caused that long sleep. Maybe it was the endless events of my childhood, one after another, until they blurred together.
No one would believe what happened to me. I never told anyone, because it didn’t matter to anyone else, and I never thought there was any point in talking about it or asking for help. I gathered the broken pieces of myself on my own, because I believed that was what I was supposed to do.
These days, I see people looking at those who had to put themselves back together as children. They call them strong, yet at the same time they pity them. They feel sorry for them.
But at the same time, they are somewhat honest in their pity. They understand that a child is not meant to live a tragic life while surrounded by safety, warmth, and family.
Yet, it is not only that. It is as if this child chose to live in a painful stage that was created inside their own mind – filling a void of sadness they never truly experienced, but instead witnessed in others and, in some way, absorbed and sympathized with.
Sometimes I drift into thought. Is this what a normal life feels like? Or have I been trapped inside worries that carry no real weight? Or maybe I exaggerate everything and live inside a kind of imagined drama that only feels temporary but never really is. Or perhaps we are all living the same life, only receiving it in different ways.
If that is true, then what is my way of receiving it? What am I becoming?
Why has it become so difficult for me to reach what I want, or even imagine achieving it easily? It has turned into something distant, almost impossible to picture. Has the problem begun in the way I process everything that happens around me?
A gap formed inside my mind – sealed from all sides – accepting nothing except what I do not want. Thinking became difficult, as if building anything inside myself was blocked. There were periods like fog inside my head; I could not think clearly about anything at all. No real feeling remained, neither happiness nor sadness.
What I showed to people, to be honest, was partly an act – something without meaning, without real emotion behind it. Even crying and laughing inside felt empty, like a silent face with no features asking, “What is the point of all this?”
Was all of this caused by me, or did life shape me this way?
Or maybe modern devices took something from me, something I struggle to get back, even though I keep trying.
Now I am not trying to search for the cause as much as I am trying to end what I see in myself – the symptoms that make ordinary people uncomfortable, who simply see me as different, maybe even strange.
I connect events to each other in order to heal something within me – my emotions, my thoughts, my reactions – which I see as normal, even if “normal people” see them as unusual, or even interesting in a strange way.
And I do not mean that ordinary people are truly like that. I mean those who grew up in quiet childhoods, not in chaotic tragedies they had to survive through. People who did not have to wake up at a young age and work on rebuilding themselves. People who did not forget themselves or the reason they exist, because they were too busy just surviving without ever choosing to think about meaning.
There were many paths in front of them, strangely shaped, but almost blind – either refusing to see or choosing not to see, because they did not want to decide yet. And maybe the timing of decisions was never right, because they simply did not want it to be. Everything inside them was just… “I don’t know.
Sometimes, I see myself as a strong person because I made it through all those hardships. Despite everything, I am still standing, and I am still here. But there are also times when I see myself as weak. Even after everything I have endured, I still haven’t achieved a result that truly satisfies me. I believe that, as a human being, my responsibility is to keep myself alive, healthy, and full of life.
Perhaps, dear reader, you think I am being too hard on myself. But I do not see it as harshness, as long as it is the truth. Or perhaps I should say that I refuse to call it grief, because it is simply the truth. This time, I choose to face it, to see myself as I truly am, without running away.
At the beginning of this year, my thoughts and emotions collided all at once. The first of them was my grandmother’s death, which happened during my General Secondary Supplementary Examinations.
It is still difficult to talk about her, even though I have spoken about her to several people. For the first time in a long while, I felt something inside me. I felt the kind of sadness people usually describe. At least, I think I did. I was almost happy that I could finally see myself as a little more normal. I cried deeply, just as I had cried before, but the moment I heard the news of her passing, the feeling was completely different. It was alive.
It hurt. I was terrified of losing her. Yet, at the same time, I never wanted to spend every moment of the day sitting beside her – and I mean all day, not simply spending time together as a family. That was when my emotions began crashing against the walls of my chest, excited for her return while grieving a return that could never happen.
Her absence awakened some emotions and buried others. Life has a strange way of teaching its lessons.
I loved sitting with her, even though we disagreed about many things. I loved those moments despite the little things she did that annoyed me. Looking back now, those things seem meaningless, though perhaps they were never meaningless at all.
For a long time, I blamed everyone else. Now, I mostly blame myself, and only a little of them.
She loved sitting with me because I was the person she talked to the most. I always let her speak, no matter what she wanted to talk about, and I answered her in a way that made sense to her. I tried to meet her way of thinking so she could speak freely. I loved seeing her smile.
Yet even then, sadness never left her. It had consumed her mind, despite the Alzheimer’s disease she suffered from – a disease that our entire family suffered through with her.
Sometimes I think about the way I treated her, and I realize how unfair I was. Not only to her, but to other people as well. I was aggressive in quiet ways, both gentle and hurtful at the same time. People say adolescence is the stage where a person grows into awareness, but all I remember is growing into uncertainty.
During high school, I helped take care of her. It was the most miserable period of my life. I could not make decisions because my mind was constantly scattered. I cannot deny that I wasted my own time. I neglected myself to satisfy my thoughts, my emotions, and sometimes the people around me.
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Perhaps the pressure back then turned me into a lazy person – even my body, which once moved so freely, became heavy with laziness. I was even too exhausted to wake up from sleep
The supplementary exams felt like my final chance to fix everything I had ruined and correct my mistakes. Instead, I realized that all I had left were poor choices – or perhaps I was simply too weak to choose the path that would allow me to keep building myself.
Some people believed I was too young to carry responsibilities like these and that I should have asked for help. But the truth is, I never even tried. Maybe because I had grown so used to carrying everything alone.
It was a terrible choice. I regret it, and I still do. Now that some of my emotions have returned, it seems that regret returned with them.
More than anything, I wish my grandmother could forgive me for the way I treated her. I wish she could forgive the foolish thoughts that controlled me back then. I was trapped inside a cycle, desperately trying to fix myself. Most of my time was spent taking care of you, but perhaps I began to see that time as a burden. Or maybe I was simply so exhausted that I no longer wanted to see anyone’s face.
This year, the lesson that kept repeating itself finally became something I could truly feel. It was no longer just an idea that reached my mind – it found its way into my heart and began flowing through my veins. It became like a familiar pain, one I had grown used to. Yet every time I stop to think about it, I feel it with the same intensity all over again.
This year brought many changes. I met new people, and I also let go of others. I wished the best for all of us, despite the painful feeling of goodbye that, after so many years, I finally began to feel.
Or perhaps I simply make these things more dramatic than they really are. Maybe they matter, or maybe they do not. Sometimes I look as though I do not care, yet the truth is that I do.
This year, I entered university carrying a feeling I had never wanted to experience — a strange mix of complete dissatisfaction and complete acceptance at the same time. You might wonder what I am trying to say, or think that these thoughts are trivial. But they are my genuine feelings, even if they are not completely clear to me.
Little by little, I began to see the person I used to be. It felt as though the fog in front of my eyes was finally beginning to disappear, allowing me to see my old self more clearly — the one who once lived naturally, quietly, and with a little peace.
This time, I will not waste the chance to find myself again. I want to hold that version of me tightly, to understand it the way I should have from the beginning, and to repair everything that was left broken. I deserve another chance, because perhaps I truly deserved forgiveness for the person I was back then. No one knows me better than I know myself.
People entered my life, and I treated some of them very harshly. I only realized this after I had already done so, and I showed them a face I never expected in my life to create, a face that did not represent me at all. I ignored several people who wanted to befriend me with kind intentions and genuine interest, but I ignored most of them. There was a common reason behind all of this: I do not want any new people in my life. This feeling is strange and unwanted for me, as if I do not truly accept it inside myself.
I was not looking for someone who is exactly like me, but I was waiting for that person to simply come into my life. However, everyone I see is completely different from me, and I cannot even have a simple or satisfying conversation with them.
I moved into a university dorm room, and my roommate is kind and not bad, but she is very different from me. Her constant questions and curiosity about my life irritate me, whether about private matters or general things. Sometimes I think: what is the point of all this curiosity?
Maybe she just wants to know me better, especially since she told me that she was afraid of the girl who lived in the room before me because of her complete silence. She said that girl was so quiet it felt like she was almost like a statue in the room. Because of that, she might be trying to understand me or figure out why I behave the way I do.
At the same time, she makes me feel like I am pretending to be someone I am not because I do not talk to her much. She simplifies things in a way that sometimes irritates me, as if she believes her ideas are always correct. This makes me uncomfortable with her, although I also feel some sympathy for her because she seems simple and natural.
Sometimes she makes me feel like I should change myself in order to become better. But at the same time, she does not truly understand me, as if she sees everything in a very simple way. This makes me feel like what I have been through has no value or meaning, as if life itself is very simple.
This feeling causes me deep discomfort, and it even shows on my facial expressions.
Now I do not know where I should go. Should I take new accommodation or stay with her to learn how to deal with strangers? The same thing happened with a friend I had who created a new kind of happiness in my life. This friend filled an old void and surrounded it with flowers, and with a cold feeling. I do not know if it was artificial or not, but my friendship with this person was different from all my other friendships. I saw someone who resembles me in the way I express myself like a mosaic-style drawing full of tiny details.
I saw my younger self, who never truly had real friends, finally finding a friend — but it was too late. I created hesitation in our friendship that should not have existed. Still, I am proud of this friend for building themselves and having passion. I tried to help as much as I could, but it seems I stole part of that friend'sjoyful time.
But by making the right decision, as they say:
“ If I stay then I lose myself, If I leave then I lose you ,If I wait then it will never be me, If I move on it will never be you so what do I do? do I make left where there’s nothing right? Or right where there's nothing left. “
Yes, This friend had some unconscious thoughts, but I gave them a pass, but this friend was kind, intelligent, and ambitious, and I genuinely enjoyed spending time with them. I used to pretend sometimes so I would not show my true self to this friend specially— not because I seek attention, but because I do not want anyone to see who I really am and how poorly I sometimes behave.
I was afraid of disappointing this friend through my lack of attention, my constant distancing, or by showing emotions this person might see as wrong. So I pulled myself away, in a kind, intentional, rational, yet painful decision for both of us. I wanted peace, but I do not think I managed to make this person understand that. I still do not know how to explain it, so I let life explain it in a gentle and understandable way.
when you can’t let them go but you can’t exactly make them stay either, so instead of being immature about things, you decide to let things take its course and finally learn that stupid lesson of not obsessing over things you can’t control
I also wished for my friend to forgive me for what I did, what I took away, and what I replaced it with. It hasn’t been long since I made this decision, yet it feels like it happened a long time ago, as if time has stretched between then and now.
How strange it is to find yourself starting to shine after years of deep darkness that once blocked my path and the way I present myself to others. The meaning of everything I do in my life has become: “what is the point of all this, I wish I did not care at all.”
Now I look back as someone leaving their past behind, going to find themselves again, to rebuild themselves as they should, and to correct the mistakes of the past in a way that will make them happy first, and then make others happy as well. But I see an imbalance in this — putting myself first makes me feel as if I am an arrogant person.
How heavy the word “responsibility” is. Its weight has grown with every year of my life, and it has become heavier just by hearing it, let alone carrying it and fulfilling it.
After every paragraph I write about my past or my problems, I end up asking myself, “What is the point of all this?” How insignificant I feel for seeing small things as much bigger than they really are sometimes, making myself seem like someone who deserves pity from everyone who sees me. Do people see me the wrong way, or were all these thoughts and behaviors caused by my loneliness, my desire for someone to help me, my own weakness in thinking clearly enough, my relatives ignoring me because of my behavior, or for other reasons?
I cannot determine the answer, but sometimes I think about disappearing, undoing everything that has become filled with regret, fixing what happened, facing everything that stands in my way, and rebuilding myself into the person I once was — and still am — but in a different way.
And here I am, carrying the scattered pieces of myself, walking barefoot in silence, with nothing speaking except my eyes as they release salty tears that fall onto the wound in my chest, a wound that still remains open.
there are other parts of my life journeys on there way….And every time there will be edits on these writing
