Grieving a lost life

I was reading about the concept of arrested emotional and cognitive development in the victims of childhood abuse (Pete Walker's Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving) and it was a big Aha moment for me.

It is not just a question of arrested development too I believe. It is also discovering a sense of 'self' and identity which is delayed significantly in childhood abuse victims because of it. I have been away from my family for three years now and only recently could I get out of the survival mode just a little bit, just enough to take a breath and start discovering this 'self' I had never gotten to know. I now feel such great sadness knowing how many amazing paths I could have explored had I actually known myself when I was 18.

It's literally an alternative life always being played like an ongoing tv show at the back of my mind. There are so many fields of study I want to get into and see if I like them but I feel very very old. I am old perhaps. I am 32, and so far have not experienced life outside of minimum wage and just surviving month to month. Now I am trying very hard to finally settle in a country away from my nparents and have a normal job and maybe a normal life, something most people my age are already done with. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful I could even get this far. But at the same time, at the back of my mind, life is so different, so real and normal, and so much richer.

I don't know how to deal with this sense of loss. Maybe I'll never know.