How I Forgave the Person I Used to Be

Regret doesn’t shout. It lingers. It shows up in the still moments when the noise fades, whispering reminders of choices we wish we could take back. For a long time, mine came in the shape of a bottle. Sometimes a pill. Sometimes a night I barely remembered the next morning.

I told myself I was coping. That numbing was safer than feeling. That if I could just take the edge off the ache, I might make it through another day. What I didn’t realize was that every escape was also an erasure of my strength, my voice, and my chance to heal.

Addiction never begins as a desire to destroy. It begins as a desire to stop hurting. I wasn’t chasing a high. I was chasing relief from memories that burned and wounds that wouldn’t close. But pain postponed is pain prolonged. Every time I ran from it, it found another way to find me.

For years, regret wrapped itself around me like smoke. I’d wake in the fog of shame, telling myself I should have known better, should have stopped sooner, should have been stronger. But recovery taught me something that regret never could. Surviving isn’t weakness. It’s the beginning of wisdom.

The hardest part of healing wasn’t giving up the substances. It was learning to face myself without the haze. To look at the woman I had been and choose compassion instead of judgment. To say, you were hurting, and you tried to survive the only way you knew how.

That’s where forgiveness began. Not as a grand moment, but as a quiet decision made over and over again—to see my past self not as a mistake, but as someone who made mistakes while longing for peace.

If you’re living with regret, please hear this. You don’t have to erase your past to create your future. The parts you wish you could undo can become the very proof of your strength. Healing doesn’t mean pretending it never happened. It means allowing it to become something sacred, a scar that tells the truth of what it took to stay alive.

I still carry my regrets, but not as chains anymore. They’ve become reminders of the grace that found me when I had none left for myself. In learning to forgive the person I used to be, I finally made room for the person I am becoming.

Author’s Note

If this piece spoke to you, I invite you to follow me here on Medium for more reflections on healing, resilience, and self-forgiveness. You can also download the free first chapter of my memoir, I’m a Nobody, Are You a Nobody Too? at newleafcoachingandconsulting.org/nobody. It’s a story about survival, hope, and learning to see your own worth again.