How to cope with the regret of a life wasted?
I'm turning 30 in a week. Feels fucking weird to type that out.
Started smoking at 17, quickly became a habit. Quit a couple of times but always went back to it.
Looking back at the last 10 years I feel like a complete idiot. I feel like I had so much potential but all I did was sit around by myself and smoke myself numb.
Have very few friendships, no degrees or skills, any particular work experience, nothing. I have a bit of money saved up from working a remote job for 2-3y where all I did was smoke weed all day while working from home until I burnt out 2y ago and lost the job but that's it.
Looking back all I see is wasted opportunities, multiple university dropouts, lost friendships and relationships. I am a shell of a person now.
Being sober is nice but the regret and feelings of being a waste of space are unbearable, so much so that often times I go back and smoke weed. Because why not, at this point it doesn't matter anymore anyway, right? At least that's what my brain tells me.
All my 20s I thought I had time to figure things out and things would work out eventually but they didn't.
>Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
>Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
>And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Edit:
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who took the time to read my post and reply. Your words meant a lot in a difficult moment