Lost Versions

I think about the lives I almost had.

Not in grand, cinematic ways — like becoming someone entirely different, or waking up in a life that feels wholly unrecognizable. It's quieter than that. Softer. It lives in the in-between spaces, in the pauses between one decision and the next, in the moments where a single choice could have rewritten everything.

What if I had chosen to begin my life somewhere else: the city that once felt like a dream I could almost reach, close enough to taste but never quite mine to claim?

It's not that I don't love the life I have now. I adore it deeply. I love the people, the familiarity of my surroundings, the strange comfort of routines I once resisted. But I wonder, sometimes, if I had chosen a different university, a different city, a different version of the beginning —would anything really change? Or would I still be the same person, quiet in unfamiliar rooms, worrying about grades, overthinking friendships, carrying the same essential pieces of myself into a different version of everything?

The intensity of these thoughts feels strongest when I'm alone, sitting still, doing nothing in particular. And suddenly, the idea of these other lives begins to unfold, not urgently, not loudly, but with a persistent weight that stays with me long after the moment has passed.

It's not regret. I know that much. I seldom regret choosing this life over the others that were waiting.

But there is something about the gravity of a what if that refuses to let go.

A conversation I chose not to have. The friendships I didn't lean into enough, the ones that might have deepened into something irreplaceable if I had stayed a little longer, tried a little harder, shown up more fully. And then the opposite haunts me just as much: what if I hadn't met the people who now feel absolutely essential to who I am? What if I had been too afraid, too closed, too distracted to let them in at all?

The words that sat at the tip of my tongue; whole truths I swallowed instead of speaking; what would have shifted if I had finally said them out loud?

What if I had chosen to study harder for a quiz instead of getting lost in everything else that seemed to matter in the moment? Would the grades have been enough to prove something: my time, my effort, my capacity? But somehow, it's not the grades that come back to me. It's the conversations. The specific, irreplaceable moments that no grade could ever measure or replace.

How many shades of my life would look entirely different if I had made even one choice differently?

A year ago, I was standing at the edge of everything, imagining with startling clarity the versions of my life that were about to begin. I saw myself everywhere at once, inhabiting futures that felt vivid and close and genuinely possible.

Somewhere in New York City, moving through streets that felt larger than life, with Empire State of Mind playing like a promise in the background, the whole city humming with the particular electricity of becoming. Somewhere quieter, maybe California or Indiana, slower and softer, reading in the afternoon sun, building a life that felt gentle around the edges. Or back home, moving through the familiar rhythm of the Metro, the version of me that never left and made something whole from what was already there.

They all felt real, in their own way. Close enough to reach out and touch.

And then, slowly, they weren't. Not because they vanished; but because I didn't step into them. I stood at the threshold and chose one door, and every other door quietly, permanently closed behind me.

Sometimes it feels like those lives slipped through my fingers like sand, almost mine for a moment, real enough to grieve, before I ever had the chance to hold them properly.

But maybe they were never meant to be held. Maybe they existed only as possibilities, not losses, but quiet evidence of how many ways a single life can unfold, and how, despite everything, we still find ourselves arriving here. In this version. The one we chose, and the one that, in its own imperfect way, chose us back.

Butter & Blue | March 22, 2026