Phantom selves
On regret, scar tissue, the versions of yourself you outgrew, and the ones still waiting to be born
Chapter 39
Milan Kundera once wrote: “We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”
A whole universe collapses into that one sentence. Regret becomes the unavoidable tax of being human, of carrying one life while knowing you could have lived a hundred more.
The ache isn’t about choosing wrong. It’s about the brutality of having to choose at all. (Remember Sylvia Plath’s fig tree, watching every version of yourself ripen, knowing you can only bite into one?)
Every yes means a thousand nos. Every path taken means dozens untaken. Every version of yourself you become means all the versions you don’t get to meet. And regret? Regret is what happens when you can feel the ghost of those other selves hovering right at the edge of your peripheral vision.
The you who spoke up. Who took the leap. Who didn’t hesitate.
She’s there. You can feel her. She’s so real you swear you could reach out and touch her. She shows up at the worst times, middle of a work call, during your commute, the dead space between turning off Netflix and actually falling asleep. She’s the one who would’ve said the thing you choked on. Who would’ve taken the opportunity you talked yourself out of. Who would’ve handled that conversation with the grace you can only seem to access in retrospect.
She’s a phantom limb. An ache for a version of yourself that never got to exist. Made entirely of could-have-been.
And that space between who you were and who you almost became? That’s where the scar tissue forms.
The wound
There’s a reason the body reinforces what’s been torn. Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Pain heals. Scars strengthen. That’s the trade.
When you get injured, your body fortifies the wound. It lays down collagen fibers in this dense, crosshatched pattern that’s literally tougher than the skin that was there before. The scar is your body learning from damage and building something more resilient.
Regret works the same way.
When you replay the moment you stayed silent or held yourself back, your brain is showing you an alternate path. It feels uncomfortable, but that replay is also your mind generating the version of the story where you moved differently. Psychologists call it counterfactual thinking, really, it’s your brain drafting the scene you didn’t step into yet.
You, speaking up in that meeting.
You, backing yourself on that opportunity.
You, showing up to that conversation as the person you wish you’d been.
Your brain doesn’t want to torture you. It’s doing reconnaissance work. It’s measuring the distance between who you were in that moment and who you’re capable of being. It’s creating a phantom limb so you can feel what’s missing.
That ache? It’s data. Every regret is your nervous system drawing a map. Here’s where your voice should have been. Here’s where your courage goes. Here’s the boundary you needed but didn’t know to build. Here’s the version of yourself that’s still available to you, if you’re willing to reach for her.
The regret is the scar tissue forming. And scar tissue, remember, is tougher than what was there before.
You know what doesn’t leave scars? The things you tried that didn’t work out. The risks that flopped. The moments you showed up fully and still fell on your face.
Those hurt in the moment, sure. But they heal clean. They become origin stories. Stories you tell at dinner parties with wine in your hand and laughter in your voice.
No, you regret the moments of inaction. The meeting where you had the answer but swallowed it. The opportunity that had your name on it but you let someone else claim it. The version of yourself you were this close to meeting but walked away from at the last second.
That’s what leaves marks. Not what you did wrong, but what you didn’t do at all.
You only feel regret when the gap matters. When the distance between who you were and who you could have been is actually significant. When there was a version of yourself worth becoming and you just...didn’t show up to the transformation.
And what hurts more? They were real options. You weren’t delusional. You actually could have spoken up, taken the risk, shown up differently. Your brain isn’t inventing fantasy versions of you, it’s showing you the adjacent possible. The you that was right there, available, if only you’d reached.
That’s what the ache is. Grief for the becoming you postponed. The scar forms where growth was possible but didn’t happen yet. And your body remembers. Your system marks it. Not as punishment, but as a rehearsal.
The phantom limb aches because the capacity is real. You can actually feel what you’re capable of. The gap it’s simply unmapped.
Mining the gap
Most people think the goal is to live without scars. To make such perfect choices that you never have to feel that ache of could-have-been. They treat regret like something that shouldn’t exist, proof they did it wrong. They use the phantom limb to confirm their limitations instead of exploring their capacity.
I used to think the same.
But you can’t live a full life without scar tissue. You just can’t. Every moment of aliveness requires you to choose one path and abandon infinite others. Every version of yourself you become means saying goodbye to all the versions you won’t.
The question isn’t whether you’ll have regrets. The question is whether you’ll let them make you stronger or just leave you wounded.
And that depends entirely on what you do with the scar tissue.
That moment you didn’t speak up, what would it take to speak next time? What permission are you waiting for that you could give yourself? What’s protecting you by keeping quiet that you might not need protection from anymore?
That risk you didn’t take, what were you so afraid of losing? What would backing yourself actually cost? What’s the version of this that could work?
That version of yourself you can feel but haven’t become, what’s one act closer? What’s the smallest step that moves you toward her instead of away?
See, scar tissue isn’t static. It’s not just dead skin marking where damage occurred. It’s active reinforcement. Your body literally builds you back tougher in the exact place you broke.
But emotionally? You have to do that part on purpose.
The phantom limb is not haunting you. It’s there to show you what muscles you haven’t built yet. What range of motion you’re capable of. What form you could take if you stopped holding the same shape.
You take the lesson. You build the muscle. You show up differently next time.
And every time you do, the scar tissue gets stronger. You get tougher exactly where you used to be tender. You become more capable precisely where you were once fragile.
Embodying the phantom self
I think about all my phantom limbs, all the versions of myself that ache because they never got to exist. The one who spoke up earlier. Who trusted herself sooner. Who didn’t spend years shrinking to fit a life she’d already outgrown.
I look at all my scar tissue now, all the regrets I carry, all the moments I wasn’t fully myself yet, and I see something different.
It’s a map of exactly where I grew.
Every scar marks a moment where I sensed my edge and either pushed through or pulled back. Where I felt the pull toward becoming and either followed it or turned around.
I used to think the ache meant I’d failed. That I’d missed my chance. That those versions of me were lost and I just had to live with it.
But I’m realizing now the phantom limbs ache because the nerve endings are still there. The capacity didn’t disappear. It’s waiting to be used.
That moment you stayed small? You can’t undo it. The version of yourself you didn’t become? She’s gone. The path you didn’t take? Someone else walked it.
But the scar tissue remains. Denser. Stronger than what was there before. It’s what gives you the resilience to try again. What transforms regret from wound into wisdom.
Every regret you have is showing you a version of yourself that’s still available. Not in the past, that moment’s gone. But in every moment that comes after. The meeting next week. The opportunity next month. The conversation tomorrow. The phantom limb stops aching when you give it a body.
When you take the voice you didn’t use and use it now. When you take the courage you didn’t have and build it anyway. When you take the self you almost were and become her.
You have to let it form properly. You have to stop picking at it, stop treating it like evidence you’re broken, stop wishing it didn’t exist.
You have to let the regret teach you, make you tougher. Let it build you back stronger exactly where you broke.
That’s how the ache transforms. By letting the phantom limb hurt like hell, and then growing in the exact direction it aches.
The ache becomes a map
So what phantom limb aches the loudest when you’re alone with your thoughts? What scar tissue are you forming right now? What regret are you carrying that’s trying to make you tougher?
No, you can’t go back and choose differently. You’d be a different person. The moment is gone. The wound happened. The scar is forming whether you want it to or not.
But you can decide what it builds.
You can let it make you smaller, proof you should stay quiet, play safe, never reach again.
Or you can let it make you sovereign, tougher exactly where you broke, braver precisely where you hesitated, stronger in the tender places you thought would always be weak.
The beautiful thing about phantom limbs? They don’t haunt you with what’s gone, they reveal what’s still possible. They show you what you could build if you stopped mourning what didn’t happen and started creating what still can.
The version of you you keep aching for? She’s not behind. She’s standing in the doorway of your next choice, waiting to see if you’ll choose in her direction this time.
You can’t control the wound. But you can control what grows from it, an armor that keeps the world out, or a strength that finally lets you step into it.
So before you close this page, ask yourself…
What future is my scar asking me to build?
Until next time,
Stay messy. Stay brave. Stay curious about the ache.
Eleni
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” — Harriet Beecher Stowe
👉 What phantom limb still aches for the life you haven’t built yet?
💬 What scar is asking you to grow next?
Every Monday at 10:30 CET, the Glorious Fail shows up to meet you where you are, and push you where you’re meant to go.
The Glorious Fail is just getting started. And every voice here shapes what it becomes. We’re unlearning the silence, reclaiming the story, and writing a braver one, together. There are plenty of ways to support it:
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Those could-have-beens, oh well, me back then, saying nothing, that broken pen I was, afraid of leaking ink on trying just to say something, which… could have changed my life. Simplifying the way I did things later on. Staying in the good mood instead of back to grey.
But hey, I’d not have seen the obstacles on my way I’m writing here about. Now that I’m back on that track after a few roundabouts, I can’t hop into a parallel universe to also live that life from day 1, only from day 7633 or something.