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Learning to Live With the Years I Will Never Get Back
It’s not about getting back the years I gambled away. It’s slowly accepting the fact that I can’t.
Accepting that my gambling addiction stole years I can’t recover — and learning how to live anyway.
Recently, I’ve been overwhelmed by the fact that my gambling addiction robbed me of so much of my young adulthood. Truth be told, it feels as though it’s been taken in its entirety; I only hold back from typing this out loud so I can dispel any concerns that I’m having some kind of crisis.
It’s not huge… but it is a lot.
There are a few reasons I feel this way. Missed opportunities to travel the world is probably the biggest. Seeing friends achieving life goals — like engagements, marriages, and starting families in homes they own — is a close second.
If I were to sum it all up, it would be a general, deep-seated feeling that life has been passing me by for years now.
Not the best feeling for a 28-year-old to be feeling. And yes, I hear everybody in their 30’s and 40’s (and above!) screaming at me that this is flawed thinking. I get it — I do. But these feelings are real and valid; to deny them would do me no good.
