your past regrets led you here

I had to wonder:
Have you ever wondered if our regrets are just roadmaps leading us to where we need to be?

yesterday,
i had a heart-to-heart with karaoke about the ghosts of our past choices.

she’s doing well,
by the way.

anyhoo,
in therapy,
i’ve been wrestling with the regrets of what i tolerated back in the day.
people i should have cussed out or making better decisions.
then,
she dropped a bombshell of wisdom on me,
and i’m going to do my best to capture her words

“Well,
what if you had it all together back then?
Like,
you were confident and handled everything perfectly?
What if you didn’t meet me when you did?
Instead,
you met some folks who invited you to a cool gay club in Orlando.
Next thing you know,
you were one of the people killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Or,
you cussed out someone and they ended up killing you.
Or another maybe,
you would have had no motivation to create your website.

Not only that,
if you made the right and perfect choices,
you’d probably be very boring.

That’s the thing with regrets.
We only know what we know.
Everything happens the way it needs to because that,
or some other possibility,
is in another path in our lives.

There are things we were saved from and we didn’t even realize.
People who did us wrong and we set them on their own path of regrets with us.

I don’t know what your future holds but everything in your past led you here.
Everything you’re doing now will lead you to something in the future.
You can’t feel sad about things you did in the past because you didn’t know.”

…and that shut me tf up.