Handling regrets - Letting go of the past

With a smile on my face, we exchanged our vows and I boldly said the words `I do'. It was the moment I had been waiting for all my life, My wedding day. I was getting married to the love of my life, he was everything I hoped for in a man, everything I had wished for, my dream man indeed. I couldn't stop smiling realizing i would be spending the rest of my life with my soul mate...
Days, weeks and months passed, my marriage went from sweet to sour, grace to grass. I couldn't help but wonder where i got it all wrong, what changed?? He wasn't the man i knew years ago, `this is not the man i married' i thought to myself.

My sweet peaceful and loving husband has now turned into a bitter nagging and loath full devil. He now enjoys every opportunity he has to molest me and beat me up. Everything I say now turns into an argument that leads to severe beating. 

`If only i hadn't married him'.

Handling regrets and letting go of the past can be a very big task that might seem unaccomplishable, so instead of handling them we just try to wallow in them and drown ourselves in the sea of regrets and questions of `what ifs' and `if onlys' instead of trying to move on. `What if I had done this the other way, it could have turned out better' `If only I could rewind time, I would do better at this and make a better decision' and it goes on and on like that until we allow our future and our present to be determined by our pasts without taking any steps to work on the present to improve the future. We try to use the past as an excuse for who we are in the present without accepting that what's done is done and we need to move on and make better choices. 

We all don't look like what we've been through, trust me everyone has their own challenges, some just carry heavier weights than the other but you need to understand that what lies behind you is history, what lies before you is future. You may not be able to change your past, your future is yet unlived but the present provides you with opportunities to maximize the life and ability that lies within you. 

There's something inevitable about how the human mind works, it's going to try to draw you backwards, it's going to try to get you to focus on the bad things that have happened in your past and maybe, just maybe it has the best intentions, maybe it's hope that you don't repeat the same mistakes, maybe it wants to ensure that you don't do them in the future but the problem is we keep ruminating over our past whether it's going to occur again and it robs us of our energy and performance, your energy goes where your intention is and if your intention is in the past, that's where your energy is and you're never going to be able to plan for the future as well as you want to. You have to be able to accept your present without punishing yourself by living in the past. Living in the pain of what you got wrong. You cannot keep using regret as an escape plan to curl up in your thoughts and fail to take action.

 Take yourself up, dust yourself off and keep on going. Let it go, stop locking yourself in the cages of your past. Just like a virus, when it enters your body, it replicates and then spreads, that's exactly how regrets get to be when we allow them invade our minds. Life hasn't gone as planned? It doesn't for anyone, move on.
Focus on what's good in your life and let go of the negatives, life circumstances won't be perfect but the truth is until you let go, until you forgive yourself, you cannot really make progress and move forward. Get past your past. You cannot get to where you want to be if you don't face the truth about where you're at and deal with it. I'm still working on myself, we all are, we have all made wrong choices at some point in our lives but what matters is that you're willing to let go of the past, focus on the present and build the future. It won't be easy, it's going to be a long process, it will take time to fully let go of your past but you must be willing to take on the journey to be a better person.
You need to understand that in life, you will always make mistakes, they're inevitable, nobody is perfect. Learn from the mistake and move on, talk to someone you trust about what you've been through and what you're going through, personally I would say talk to God. Forgive yourself if you've done something wrong and forgive others too. You can also help somebody else, I have come to realize that when you help people so they don't make the same mistakes you've made or take the same steps you've taken, it's a good way of letting go of that regret, it makes you feel more of yourself than less of yourself.

If we were perfect, we wouldn't be human. It's time to drop the questions of `what ifs' and `if onlys' into the bin and begin to ask yourself questions like `What can I change?' `How can I change it?' `What do I do?' `What steps do I take?'. It's time to let go and move on.

Peace out🕊☮️