The Lives I didn't Live

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you had chosen differently?

Not the kind of question you ask casually.

Not the kind you toss into a conversation with a laugh when someone says, “I wonder where we’d all be if we’d made different choices.”

I mean the kind of question that follows you.

The kind that waits until the house is quiet.

The kind that appears when you’re driving alone and a song comes on that somehow remembers a version of you that you thought you’d forgotten.

The kind that slips into your mind while you’re standing in the shower, washing the day away, and suddenly you aren’t thinking about tomorrow anymore.

You’re thinking about twenty years ago.

Or ten.

Or five.

You’re thinking about one particular day.

One particular person.

One particular decision.

And then the question comes.

What if?

I have asked that question more times than I can count.

What if I had chosen differently?

What if I had taken another road?

What if I had stayed?

What if I had left sooner?

What if I had said yes?

What if I had said no?

What if I had gone to college?

What if I had never had my baby?

What if I had lived the life my family imagined for me?

What if I had married someone else?

What if I had stayed in the marriage?

What if I had never left?

What if I had taken a chance on the person who gave me their phone number?

What if one of us had gotten on a plane?

What if long distance had worked?

What if I had gone on one of those dates I turned down?

What if I had stayed in my hometown?

What if I had never moved?

What if I had never gone back?

What if I had never looked for that tap on my shoulder?

Would I be with him now?

Or would I still be alone?

There are so many questions that sometimes it feels as though my life is surrounded by invisible doors.

Behind every door is another version of my life.

I can imagine opening some of them.

I can see pieces of what might have been.

But I can never walk through.

And perhaps that is what makes the questions so powerful.

There is no answer.

There never will be.

We can imagine.

We can speculate.

We can build entire lives inside our heads.

But we can never know.

That is the strange cruelty of time.

It allows us to remember everything and change nothing.

When you’re young, you don’t understand how permanent some decisions can be.

You think life is endlessly waiting for you.

You think there will always be another opportunity.

Another chance.

Another person.

Another beginning.

You don’t realize that some moments only happen once.

You don’t know that a person standing in front of you today may not be standing there tomorrow.

You don’t know that the last time you walk through a particular doorway could actually be the last time.

You don’t know that one decision can create ten more decisions behind it.

You don’t know that saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else you haven’t even met yet.

And you certainly don’t realize that someday you’ll sit quietly and wonder about all of it.

When I look back at my life, I don’t see one enormous decision that created everything.

I see hundreds of little ones.

Some were deliberate.

Some were made because I had no idea what else to do.

Some were made because I was afraid.

Some were made because I was hopeful.

Some were made because I loved someone.

Some were made because I was trying to protect myself.

And some were made because I simply didn’t know that I was standing at a crossroads.

That’s probably the hardest part.

We don’t always recognize crossroads when we’re standing in them.

Sometimes they look like ordinary Tuesdays.

Sometimes they look like a conversation.

Sometimes they look like a phone number written on a piece of paper.

Sometimes they look like a pregnancy test.

Sometimes they look like a suitcase packed beside a door.

Sometimes they look like someone asking you to stay.

Sometimes they look like someone giving you a reason to leave.

At the time, you don’t hear dramatic music.

There isn’t a voice from the heavens telling you, This is the moment that will change your life.

You simply make a choice.

Then you wake up the next morning.

And life continues.

Until years later, you realize that morning was the beginning of everything.

I sometimes wonder if there is another version of me somewhere in the imaginary universe of all the lives I could have lived.

Maybe she went to college.

Maybe she never became a mother.

Maybe she became exactly what everyone expected her to become.

Maybe she married after college.

Maybe she has children who grew up with more relatives around them.

Maybe she stayed in her hometown.

Maybe she never moved.

Maybe she stayed in the marriage.

Maybe she never experienced the same heartbreaks.

Maybe she experienced different ones.

Maybe she is happier.

Maybe she isn’t.

That’s something we forget when we imagine alternate lives.

We tend to imagine the best possible version.

We rarely imagine the ordinary Tuesday.

We imagine the wedding but not the argument afterward.

We imagine the successful career but not the years of exhaustion.

We imagine the perfect family but not the complicated moments.

We imagine the person we almost loved becoming our soulmate, but we don’t imagine discovering that we weren’t actually right for each other.

We imagine the life we didn’t choose as though it came without consequences.

It didn’t.

Every road has consequences.

Every choice costs us something.

Even the right choice can hurt.

Sometimes especially the right choice.

I have learned that there is no life without loss.

Every life requires us to leave something behind.

If you choose one person, you may never know another.

If you stay in one town, you may never discover another.

If you have one career, you may never know what another would have felt like.

If you become a parent young, you may never know the person you would have been without that responsibility.

If you leave a marriage, you may never know who you would have become if you stayed.

If you stay, you may never know who you could have become if you left.

There is no way to win against time.

There is only the life you actually live.

And yet, I still wonder.

Maybe that’s because wondering is easier than accepting that some answers will never come.

Maybe we ask what if because we want to believe there was a perfect path.

One road that would have led to fewer mistakes.

Fewer tears.

Fewer regrets.

More happiness.

More certainty.

But what if there was never a perfect path?

What if there were only different paths?

Different versions of hard.

Different versions of beautiful.

Different versions of heartbreak.

Different versions of joy.

What if the person I would have become on another road wasn’t necessarily better?

What if she was simply different?

I think about the younger version of myself sometimes.

I wonder what she would think if she could see me now.

Would she recognize me?

Would she be proud?

Would she be disappointed?

Would she ask me why I made certain choices?

Would she understand why I stayed when I stayed?

Why I left when I left?

Why I said yes?

Why I said no?

Would I be able to explain it to her?

I’m not sure.

Because the truth is, we often make decisions with the information we have at the time.

The woman I was years ago didn’t know what I know now.

She couldn’t see the future.

Neither could I.

She couldn’t know who would stay.

She couldn’t know who would leave.

She couldn’t know which relationships would survive.

She couldn’t know which ones wouldn’t.

She couldn’t know which choices would eventually bring her peace.

She couldn’t know which ones would keep her awake at night.

She was simply doing the best she could with the life in front of her.

And maybe that’s all any of us are doing.

Making decisions with incomplete information.

Hoping.

Praying.

Guessing.

Loving.

Fearing.

Trying.

Then living with the results.

Sometimes I think we are too hard on our younger selves.

We judge old decisions using information we didn’t have yet.

We look back and say, I should have known.

But how could we have known?

The only reason we know now is because we lived through what came next.

That’s the unfair advantage of hindsight.

We know the ending.

Our younger selves didn’t.

And yet we expect them to have acted as though they did.

Maybe they couldn’t.

Maybe neither could I.

Maybe neither can you.

So this book isn’t really about finding the correct answer to every what if.

I know I never will.

It’s about the questions themselves.

The roads.

The people.

The choices.

The lives that almost happened.

The lives that might have happened.

The lives we sometimes mourn even though we never actually lived them.

Because I believe most people carry these invisible lives with them.

You may have one too.

Maybe you have a person you still think about.

Maybe you have a career you wonder about.

Maybe there is a city you wish you had moved to.

Maybe there is a relationship you wish you had never entered.

Maybe there is one you wish you had never left.

Maybe there is a child you wonder about.

Maybe there is a friendship you wish you had fought harder to save.

Maybe there is a phone call you wish you had answered.

Maybe there is one you wish you had made.

Maybe you remember someone’s face.

Maybe you remember the sound of their voice.

Maybe you remember the exact moment you knew something was changing.

And maybe, like me, you sometimes wonder what would have happened if you had made one different choice.

That is where this story begins.

Not with an answer.

With a question.

A question I have carried through different versions of myself.

A question that has followed me through motherhood, relationships, leaving, staying, moving, loving, losing, and beginning again.

A question that has never completely gone away.

What if?

Maybe you have asked it too.

Maybe you have asked it about your own life.

And maybe, as you read these pages, you’ll start remembering your own crossroads.

The moments when you stood between two roads and had no idea where either one would lead.

The people who stood on one side of those roads.

The people who disappeared down the other.

The choices that shaped everything that came after.

And perhaps, by the time you reach the final page, you won’t just be wondering about my what ifs anymore.

You’ll be thinking about yours.

Because eventually, every one of us has to face the uncomfortable truth:

There are lives we will never know.

There are answers we will never get.

There are people we will never become.

And there are roads we can never go back and take.

But there is still one road in front of us.

The one we are standing on now.

And the next choice is still ours.

The question is—

What will we do with it?