Sometimes I think about the lives I nearly lived: the rooms I almost rented, the cities I almost stayed in, and the people I nearly allowed to know me forever.
There is a version of me standing behind every decision. She took the other job. She sent the message. She stayed. She left earlier. For a while I treated her like proof that I had made the wrong choice, as if somewhere there was a perfect timeline and I had simply missed the entrance.
But an unlived life is easy to romanticize because it never has to become ordinary. It never misses the train, says the wrong thing, or gets tired halfway through becoming itself.
Maybe closure is realizing the other version of you was never more real than the one who kept going.
I don’t think I need to stop wondering. Wondering is part of how I remember what mattered. I just don’t want to confuse possibility with destiny anymore. The person in the rearview mirror is not waiting for me to turn around. She is waving.