Regretting You

by Colleen Hoover

It’s my birthday, and I’m surrounded by everyone important to me, but for some reason, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt. I should be happy right now, but something is off. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’m getting bored.

swear, sometimes I forget who I was or what I loved before I got pregnant with Clara.

It’s like the day I found out I was pregnant, I became someone else. I guess that happens when you become a mother, though. Your focus is no longer on yourself. Your life becomes all about this beautiful tiny little human you created.

She’s beautiful and grown, and I ache at the loss of her childhood sometimes. When she’d sit in my lap or I’d snuggle up to her in bed until she fell asleep.

I’m proud of my husband and proud of my daughter, but when I look at myself and my life separate from theirs, there’s very little I can find to be proud of. I just feel like I’m full of all this untapped potential. Sometimes my chest feels hollow, as if I’ve lived a life with nothing significant enough to fill it. My heart is full, but that’s the only part of me that feels any weight.

“It means people who make mistakes usually learn from them. That doesn’t make them hypocrites. It makes them experienced.”

If my boyfriend lied to me about being in the car with another girl, then followed that girl on Instagram, he’d be my ex-boyfriend too.