Unfortunately, the next decade is when it begins to show.
Not the mistakes themselves — but the compounding of them.
The slow unravel. The hard landing. The moment when the cost comes due.
It’s already started for some of us.
You look around, and the people you grew up with… the ones you love, the ones who laughed with you when things were simple — they’re tired now. Distant. Heavy. And it’s not just the weight of life. It’s the weight of choices made years ago that are just now bearing their full fruit.
The avoidance.
The self-deception.
The refusal to heal, to tell the truth, to choose something better.
This is what happens when patterns go unchecked.
When small lies grow into lives.
When the pain gets passed forward instead of dealt with.
And what no one tells you is how helpless it feels to witness.
You can’t save people who won’t come up for air.
You can’t force accountability.
You can’t out love someone’s refusal to be honest with themselves.
So you watch.
You grieve.
You pray.
And sometimes, you let go — not out of anger, but out of exhausted compassion.
This isn’t judgment.
It’s heartbreak.
Because when you see someone you care about choose the long road to destruction, one denial at a time, something in you breaks. Especially when you remember: it didn’t have to be this way.
We talk a lot about protecting our peace — but rarely about how it feels when the war is happening just across the hall. In your family. Your friendships. Your marriage.
So if you’re in that season — witnessing, aching, staying soft — know this:
You are not alone. And even when you can’t rescue, your clarity is still resistance. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is not follow them into the fog.