You feel behind in life and it's crushing you

This crushing feeling is worth taking apart, because much of what it rests on is not real. First, behind assumes a schedule that does not exist — married by this age, established by that — which no one actually wrote and you never agreed to, and lives run on wildly different timelines, so the markers you feel you missed are a story absorbed, not a law. Second, comparison hides the different roads people walked — the helps they had, the costs they paid, the ways they are in fact behind you — so ranking yourself in an imagined common race uses an instrument that does not fit. Third, start from where you actually are, since it is the only place you can begin, and the next real step is always available from exactly here. The past cannot be redone and the comparison cannot be won; your own path can be walked. Where do you feel most behind?