I feel you. Having to grieve the person you could’ve been is one the tragedies of having been forced to survive rather than live. The most difficult part of healing is somehow forging a new life in which you can thrive.

That’s something that I’ve been struggling with lately. If I structure my life around who I am right now, then the result is a routine of misery where I don’t chase anything of joy. However, if I try to build a life for the person I would like to be, I find I don’t fit inside that world, and I crumble — demoralised by overambitious burnout. The tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be is a tightrope that I need to somehow balance on if I want to make progress.

Solidarity, friend. You deserve better than what you have had.