GenX, if you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?

This is a bit of a different answer from what you're requesting, but I've thought about this all my life and there's just one thing I wish I could go back and change. If I could go back to age seven, I would *never ever ever* suggest to my mom that we were walking on the wrong side of the road. Here's an edited version of why. That day my mom had taken my neighbor's daughter (Kate, 9-ish) and me to a bird park. Due to unforeseen circumstances we ran into a transportation issue that resulted in us taking the bus back, which meant a long walk into our (private) neighborhood. (Mom's car died as we were about to leave for the park, my stepdad drove us but had prior engagements, so her stepmum was supposed to pick us up, but the call wouldn't go through and it turned out one of the extensions had been left off the hook.) As we disembarked and walked a few steps I remembered a lesson we'd recently learned in class about always facing oncoming traffic and I voiced my concern. Mom agreed, as we'd need to cross over anyway to get to our entrance, so we promptly did. Seconds later a drunk driver emerged from an avenue and ploughed right into us. This set off an insane chain of events: I was sandwiched between my mum and Kate and was physically unharmed. We all lost consciousness, however, and some busybody (perhaps?) immediately went to our home and told my step-grandma that we'd just been killed in a car crash. She died instantly from the shock. Mom's leg was badly damaged and required multiple surgeries. (Never fully recovered.) Kate's collarbone was broken. Her parents blamed my mum and it ended their friendship. When my mom had to go back in for surgery a few weeks later my stepdad was overseas, so I stayed with one of her friends from work, who was married with two daughters slightly older than I was. One night while her husband and I were watching tv alone after everyone else had gone to bed he put his hand under my skirt and asked if I could keep a secret. I don't remember much else, or anything else about the visit for that matter. Weeks later I finally broke down and told my mum. She went ballistic. Confronted the husband and he denied it but apparently his wife believed me. She left him and took the girls, but it effectively ended her friendship with my mum. I had continual flashbacks to that night in my teens and early 20s and I always suspect it's the reason I always had to get drunk or high to be intimate. My mom was anti-therapy ("there's a stigma," she'd say) so I tried to cope. Once I tried to talk to her about it - I was about 17 - and she told me to put it behind me and move on. I swallowed a bottle of pills that night. She freaked out and cried a lot but still wouldn't talk about it. She acknowledged that I was suffering from depression but other than one laughable session with a Christian psychologist and an attempt to reconcile with my bio-dad for my benefit, she pretty much gave up. (She died a couple years later so there's no hope for resolution.) I'm convinced that a lot of my neuroses stem from that period of childhood. I spent most of my 20s and 30s in and out of psych wards, on and off psych meds, and nothing ever helped. The issue has still never been addressed. There are times I'm even convinced that we DID die in that accident and everything afterwards is some hellish alternate universe. I remember being happy before then. If I could do anything again I'd go back to that day in the late seventies and keep my damn mouth shut.