How Do I Look to the Future and Make Peace with My Past?

I am prone to rumination, a hallmark of the depressive personality.  I hesitate to even say that I'm a depressive because to meet me you most likely wouldn't think that.  I am extroverted, pretty  quick-witted and somehow manage to at least externally maintain my sense of humor even when down.  Oh, but to those who've known me for years, they have seen the darker me.   The one who goes inside emotionally, can't talk with people, is hypersensitive to criticism and paranoid that everyone hates even the thought of me.  Almost needless to say that another hallmark of being a depressive is, when actively depressed,  being profoundly self-centered. 

So here I sit at my computer trying to do what others with a different temperament than mine do: feel the pain, learn from it and move on to a life spent moving forward and not so much looking back.  

If left unchecked I wallow in the past (see above paragraph) but I've noticed that the sturdier amongst us have the ability to let things slide off their backs.  I've also seen folks be in total denial of their pain so the middle ground is where I aspire to be. 

My entry today is my attempt to make peace with my "should haves" in life and then move on to a different yet still meaningful relationship with my youthful dreams.  

So what "should" I have done with my life when I was younger?

1. Moved to Chicago after college to pursue a sketch comedy career and/or
2. Studied voice at a conservatory.

Um, that's really it.   

I sit here in the land where some may say, "I regret that I never did that."  What a terrible, honest yet necessary thing to admit.  I can certainly say these words but when I think back on WHEN I should have done those things, when youth alone makes things easier and freer to pursue dreams, I also remind myself that I was truly, actively, miserably, suicidally depressed....for years.  Even if I had thought to myself, "now I need to move to Chicago," it really couldn't have happened, in fact it's probably good that it didn't happen. 

So yes, I do feel sad that I didn't do those two things but here's the twist in all this that I am going for.  Are you still with me? I still want a comedy and/or music career or at least the knowledge that I tried my best to do either.  That fire in me has never, ever dimmed, in fact it gets more pronounced.  

Yes, I know, there are no guarantees of success.  For every Tina Fey and Conan O'Brian there are thousands of people whose names we don't know.  

Comedy sketches, screenplays, song lyrics now more actively then ever bounce around in my brain and finally, luckily, happily I am starting to listen to those ideas and put them down on paper.  

It's a start.