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Original poster

How do I reconcile with the fact I've wasted my youth?

31 replies

ThatChirpyBird · 14/06/2025 23:25

First-time poster looking for a little advice so please be kind.

I turn 27 next week and I'm gobsmacked at how garbage my life is. I've got a plethora of diagnoses and otherwise rotted in bed from about the age of 13 up till now. I'm really, really struggling. I've cried myself to sleep for the past year at how much life I've wasted. I've watched it pass me by.

I've promised myself I need to start looking to the future. Start from scratch. My employment history is sketchy, I got my first job at 24. Before that, I was a compulsive gambler. I guess I convinced myself that I could make a career out of it, having crippling social anxiety and otherwise non-existent self esteem.

But anyway, now I am in the here and now. I'm going to start making steps to improve my life. I know I can't change it overnight. Going to decide on a career path, get a routine, start gym.

But my god it makes me so, so sad when I think of the time I've wasted. I just don't understand my thought process. What have I been thinking all along? I know I've had a difficult past 10-15 years, the stories I could tell. I have crippling OCD too. But I'm making amends with myself now. But I think of the experiences I've missed out on, what I should have been doing, feel like a loser because I haven't been partying. I'm 27 and have nothing to show for it. I could reconcile with the fact if I had money and a good job to show for it. Or I'd been having awesome experiences. But I've done sweet F all.

I don't want to sound narcissistic but I'm relatively good looking too, but I've allowed myself to become overweight. The years of my best looks are behind me. It hurts knowing my best looks are behind me. I don't know whether I compare myself too much, but if I had put myself out there I might've achieved something. I'm reasonably intelligent too but have wasted it. I've wasted everything. :(

Please be kind. I've got autism if that's relevant.

OP posts:
DelphiniumBlue · 14/06/2025 23:44

You’re young, you’ve got plenty of time to sort this out.
Don’t waste time regretting what you can’t change. Put your energies into planning for the future. Your best years are not behind you, they’re yet to come.
What training and qualifications have you got to start building on? What are your interests? Are you particularly knowledgeable about a given topic?
I’d say work out what it is you’d like to do career wise, then plan how you can get there, in small steps. If you want to make up for lost time, you’ll have to work hard, but that’s ok. You might need to do an access course to be able to progress, maybe look at somewhere like Birkbeck for ideas of what’s available. Or your local college would be a good place to start, or look at apprenticeships.
Dont worry about other people, they don’t care what you’ve done previously, in most places I’ve worked the general chat is very basic, who watched what on Netflix etc.
it might be worth getting some sort of counselling to help you work out the way forward and how to channel your energies.

JennyForeigner · 14/06/2025 23:41

In some countries (cough, Germany) 27 is when people graduate. This is not being glib, in this day and age people don't expect you to have all of the answers at your age. What will last your whole life and see you through every day at work and at home is grit. To have made the changes you've made takes willpower and resilience, and it means you understand people are fallible and capable of change.

Take that and go and build something awesome with it. Bring down international gambling, do something in social care, mentor kids or be a maths teacher with an understanding of probability. Whatever calls to you, build on where you've come from but don't waste your time now on regret. We're forged in the fire.

Original poster
ThatChirpyBird · 14/06/2025 23:36

HumanRightsAreHumanRights · 14/06/2025 23:32

In 10 years time you will look back and realise how young you still were at 27.

People wildly overestimate what they can do in 1 year, but wildly underestimate what they can do in 10.

It doesn't matter when you decide to take action, whenever you start is better than starting a few years later than whatever day it is today.

Leave the past behind and don't use lack of action then as an excuse for lack of action now or in the future.

Just keep taking one step at a time forward and one day, you'll realise how much you changed your life by trying.

Nobody can guarantee you success, but things can still be better as long as that is what you are working towards.

The only way to fail is never to start trying, or to give up.

If it helps you, I am autistic too.

Edited to add:
I imagined the life I wanted to have.
Then I worked backward to see what I would have to do to get to that life.
Then I did it.
That is how I would start.

Edited

This is my understanding right now. I'm going to take baby steps, I'm going to develop a plan of where I want to be by 30. This is my way forward. It just makes me feel physically nauseous how much time I've wasted. Like, it makes me want to scream. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive myself and that's where I'm struggling. I have such blach-and-white thinking where I've been like, there's no point in starting now, it's too late, etc. But I'm moving forward now, just makes me feel physically sick to reflect back.

I can do as much work on myself but this deep-rooted hatred and anger at myself, I don't think I'll ever be able to come to terms wirh it.

Thank you. X

OP posts:
HumanRightsAreHumanRights · 14/06/2025 23:32

In 10 years time you will look back and realise how young you still were at 27.

People wildly overestimate what they can do in 1 year, but wildly underestimate what they can do in 10.

It doesn't matter when you decide to take action, whenever you start is better than starting a few years later than whatever day it is today.

Leave the past behind and don't use lack of action then as an excuse for lack of action now or in the future.

Just keep taking one step at a time forward and one day, you'll realise how much you changed your life by trying.

Nobody can guarantee you success, but things can still be better as long as that is what you are working towards.

The only way to fail is never to start trying, or to give up.

If it helps you, I am autistic too.

Edited to add:
I imagined the life I wanted to have.
Then I worked backward to see what I would have to do to get to that life.
Then I did it.
That is how I would start.

Original poster
ThatChirpyBird · 14/06/2025 23:31

Watermelonsregularly · 14/06/2025 23:28

Life isn't a race.
Perhaps you are where you are meant to be right now? You have a different perspective on the way you see things and the direction you want to go in.
That doesn't mean everything that came before was a waste.

I get this, but it's so hard when I feel so, so unfathomably far behind my peers. How am I going to explain my poor employment history to future employers? I've got no experiences to talk about to colleagues. I feel like a dead weight.

OP posts:
Watermelonsregularly · 14/06/2025 23:28

Life isn't a race.
Perhaps you are where you are meant to be right now? You have a different perspective on the way you see things and the direction you want to go in.
That doesn't mean everything that came before was a waste.

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