Warning: this article is so cliché it’s going to make you cringe…badly.
Throwback to early 2010: Disney princess Selena Gomez had just released a song named “Hit The Lights”. A part of lyric sounded like this:
“It’s the boy who never told I like you
It’s the girl you let get away
It’s the one you saw that day on the train
But you freaked out and walked away.”
For some obvious reason this specific part of the lyric speaks to my middle school soul. Whenever it comes to the person I find myself attracted to, I’m no doubt the shyest person ever existing on the planet (no joke). I remember “that one cute kid in my high school who sat next me the whole year but I never found the courage to talk to,” or, “that friend I had feelings for but never said anything to,” or, “I met someone at a bar I really enjoy talking but I can’t say anything else….” I can go on for pages if I start to talk about people with romantic potential that I’ve missed in my life, but this is not the road I’m going on- we all know that you are better than just showing up here to read some sad teenage girl’s diary.
Lately, those people I’ve missed out on have been bothering my thoughts a lot. It’s really a wonder for me to think how many opportunities ever walk passed me in such a short period of my life. However, as I was reminiscing and reflecting, I thought of something else which changed my perspective completely. Yeah, sure, I’ve missed out on a lot of great people and who knows what we could have become (I’ve learned this the hard way), but I’m really glad I never missed out on me.
I have had a lot of regrets regarding my lack of courage when romantic relationships are involved. Looking backwards, it seems like people who didn’t get to stay in my life remain a ghostly presence with their possibilities and potential of becoming “the one,” if I only knew. I will not deny that from time to time I would think about how perfect me and the person that got away could have been. Mistakes I’ve made when I didn’t know better keep haunting me, and as a result the “ghost” of my possible love life has made me a more mature person which allows me to actually be able to go and talk to strangers at a party (…progress).
It is undeniable that I will not become who I am today if it weren’t because of my past experiences. I would like to argue that it’s our past mistakes that make us better than we used to be (as long as we learn from it ). This doesn’t only apply to relationships or romantic aspects; ever since we were babies we learn from out mistakes, we fall, we get up again. Yet we often seem to forget about this and get defeated when life crushes us, letting negative thoughts to continually affect us. We tend to forget that we’ve been practicing how to get up when fall ever since we were born (technically ever since we knew how to walk). Yes, I might have lost a new opportunity to meet “the love of my life”, but at least such a loss has helped me to better understand myself and eventually make me meet the one, who I am today.
So if it’s up to me, I say I never missed that love of my life when I thought I’d let myself walk past all of those potential parterres.