How We Got Here

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE WEIGHT OF REGRET.

Regret does not arrive all at once. It accumulates.

It settles into the quiet moments—while waiting for a train, while lying awake long after the city has gone silent, while staring at nothing in particular and realizing how much time has passed. Regret is patient. It waits until you are no longer distracted.

At first, we mistook it for tiredness. For stress. For the natural heaviness of responsibility. But regret has its own texture. It presses inward, not outward. It asks questions that do not seek answers.

What if we had spoken sooner?

What if we had left earlier?

What if we had tried harder—or less?

These questions followed us everywhere, slipping into conversations, interrupting concentration, shaping decisions. We learned to coexist with them. To acknowledge them without letting them take over. Still, their presence was constant.

Some regrets were sharp and specific. A job we didn’t apply for. A relationship we ended too quickly—or held onto for too long. A moment when silence felt safer than honesty. These regrets replayed themselves with cruel clarity, reminding us of who we might have been.

Others were vague, harder to name. A general sense of misalignment. The feeling that life had narrowed without our consent. That we had said yes too often and no too rarely. These regrets were heavier because they lacked clear origins.

France, with its emphasis on structure and progression, intensified this awareness. We watched timelines unfold around us—careers advancing, families forming, identities solidifying. Against this backdrop, our own path felt uncertain, unfinished. Regret fed on comparison.

We told ourselves that everyone carries regret. That it was not unique to us. This was true, but it offered little comfort. Knowing regret is universal does not make it lighter.

There were moments when regret hardened into self-criticism. We questioned our judgment, our courage, our timing. We wondered whether we had misread the world or simply misread ourselves. These thoughts were dangerous, capable of eroding confidence if left unchecked.

And yet, regret also clarified values. It highlighted what mattered most—authenticity, connection, agency. It revealed the cost of ignoring inner dissonance. In this way, regret was not only punitive; it was instructive.

We began to understand that regret is not always about mistakes. Often, it is about loss—lost possibilities, lost versions of self, lost time. Grieving those losses required honesty we had been avoiding.

We did not seek to erase regret. That felt impossible. Instead, we learned to carry it differently. To let it inform rather than paralyze. To recognize it as evidence of care, of investment, of having wanted something deeply.

The weight of regret did not disappear.

But it shifted.

And in that shift, something inside us made space for the next reckoning.