1. I Wish I Knew What My Friends Thought Wasn’t Important

They are my friends but that doesn’t mean I am exactly like them. I was young and I thought I was supposed to be like them. I thought I wanted the life they wanted. I thought I wanted an easy life—someone to support me, someone to take care of me. I thought I wanted a suitor but I needed a best friend.

I hate admitting this because I have genuinely always been the person who never cared what people thought. Yet I would be lying if I said they didn’t influence me. The more I forced myself to try to want what they wanted the more unhappy I was. I wish I knew that you can still be best friends and do everything together, but you do not have to be exactly the same. I wish I knew it was okay to be different from them. Ironically now what I love most about myself is how different I am from them.

2. I Wish I Knew I was Being “Young and Stupid”

This is a hard one to regret because there was no way of preventing this. You never know you are wrong until you make those mistakes. Unfortunately most of the time you do not know what you have until it’s gone. You take people for granted because you are young and you think there are a million other guys out there. You are right there are a million other guys, but they aren’t him.

“There all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

You do not know what you want until you have experienced what you don’t want, and by then it can be too late to get back what you had. I wish I knew this but I would never know until I lived it.

3. I Wish I Knew How To Not Play Games

I wish I knew how to not keep score. I wish I knew how to love openly and not be so scared. I wish I let you in rather than testing you. I wish I did not self-sabotage. I wish I knew how to enjoy the moment without thinking about how it would soon be over. I wish I just let you make me happy because that is all you tried to do. I wish I realized what I had was real and that is rarer than anything anyone else can offer.

4. I Wish I Knew How To Love Properly

I wish I knew how to not let fear step in my way of potential happiness. I wish I knew how to say what I felt before overthinking what I say. I wish I knew how to not hold back or censor myself. I wish I knew how to be nice to someone I like- without being scared of rejection. I wish I gave more compliments. I wish I said thank you especially to someone who deserved recognition. I wish I showed my appreciation.

I wish I knew how to be myself without acting so tough all the time. I wish I knew it is stronger to be vulnerable. I wish I knew how ridiculous my ego was at the time. I wish I knew how to say sorry. Mostly I wish I knew how to trust someone especially when they have given me no reason not to. I wish I didn’t think showing love was showing weakness.