Regret – or dealing with other people’s success

Like a punch in the guts, it hits me. Yet again, I see old friends or acquaintances doing well: watching the news, they’re reading it; leafing through an in-flight magazine, they’re writing it; listening to music on the radio, they’re making it; or surprising me on my newsfeed with birthday honours, plus more babies than I ever had. Why can’t I be happy for them? A sense of my own failure, perhaps, or the fact that many of these people already hurt me, one way or another, making it plain I was surplus to requirements en route to success. Today’s slap in the face, an old flame, who writes beautiful music but who is also, in many respects a bit of a cunt. Of course he’s now several albums down. While I’ve been up to my elbow in babies and lately bitcoins, all the while putting food on the table (and clothes in the dryer), he’s been living in a flat bought for him by his father who owns and rents many others, and thus can do what he pleases without needing to fend for himself.

I reconciled myself to the fact I had no option but to support myself, perhaps even before I met him, leaving me feeling for years as though my choices were funnelled down to the one’s I made as to have had no choice at all, rather than wondering if I made the right ones. Sometimes I’m grateful that it’s turned out ok – that I’ve managed to get a good enough job, own a nice enough house, stay with my husband and have pleasant enough kids who most people agree are attractive, if not always so easygoing.

I may be left with frown line so cavernous I’ve taken to rolling them with a miniature mace to try and iron them out. At least my mood is stabler now I’m on the B12. But am I happy? It’s a question I’m rarely asked, and when I do, I shirk it. Happy enough I say, while thinking ever so quickly about what it is I really, really wanted out of life and whether I’ve achieved it. In many respects I have. Yet, something’s missing.

My therapist said that humans need concentric circles of love and respect, and that’s an issue I’ve never been able to solve for myself, when securing my finances so often takes precedence over anything more fulfilling. It feels like validating my choices through financial robustness – the ability to go treat myself, eat out, go to the theatre, has become my raison d’etre, and all else is grind. It surely says something that my sense of self is defined by whether or not my cryptocurrency portfolio is going up or down; but there it is: which means this week’s been more stressful than most, to say the least.

This morning I had a moment (to myself – rare) where I remembered something about myself that’s been buried for a while – and though it’s hard to define, it was (I was reading Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind) something akin to sense of my own literary capability, and fervour; something I’ve not felt in a long time – since uni really, when everyone was puffed up on their own brilliance and the genuinely held belief that we were all going to have wonderful, fulfilling careers, often in the creative fields that now, seem solely the domain of the already privileged. Many of my friends have succeeded, whether or not they acknowledge that success is as much due to the concentric support network on which it stands, as individual prowess. But I’ve achieved contentment, which perhaps is what I’ve strived , somewhat against the odds, for most of all.

But it’s time, now all is calm, to shake things up a bit. My erstwhile couples’ counsellor, Deborah, said that, when you do the work you love, making a living from it will follow – and while I don’t hate my job – it pays the bills and offers me good work life balance – my last post is testament to some kind of comfortable stagflation.

And the sucker punch of other people’s success never quite goes away. So the only way to deal with it is either to stop caring (which requires burying one’s head even more than I already have). Or plugging away (which can feel fruitless with no particular avenue to head down.) Or starting over – which in a way, I am. Now my kids are older, I have the chance to do something new, and with opportunities to learn so few once you’re on the hamster wheel of corporate life, I’m prepared to cash in some chips – a promotion opportunity, perhaps, in favour of going back to uni and doing a masters in something I love, that will likely never pay me back. If I don’t I’ll always have nagging doubt of “what if ?” – but given I don’t believe in free will, at least this time, I’m being funnelled me into a decision I’m at least reasonably sure I’ll not regret.