entry 047 / parallel lives we'll never live 🌿

there's a version of you that took the other job. that stayed in the city. that said yes instead of no, or no instead of yes, at some pivotal tuesday you barely remember now. that version of you exists somewhere in the architecture of possibility, living out the consequences of a door you didn't walk through. you'll never meet that person. but sometimes you feel that person.

we don't talk enough about grief for the lives we didn't choose. it's a strange kind of loss because nothing actually died. nothing was taken from you. you made a choice, or life made one for you, and now here you are. but somewhere in the background, quietly, you carry the weight of all the versions of yourself that didn't get to happen.

psychologists call it counterfactual thinking. the brain's habit of running simulations on roads not taken. it can show up as nostalgia, as regret, as a kind of wistful wondering that doesn't quite have a name. sometimes it hits you in the middle of a perfectly good day. you're fine. things are fine. and still something tugs at you, like a thread you can't trace back to anything.

the parallel life fantasy is seductive because it's never quite real enough to disappoint you. the version of you that moved to paris is always having a beautiful time. the version that didn't leave your hometown always has deep roots and a sense of belonging. the version that studied something else is always fulfilled in ways your current self secretly envies. because they exist in imagination, they are immune to the ordinary disappointments that come with actually living.

what's worth sitting with, though, is this: every path has its own invisible cost. the life you didn't live also has its hard winters and its mundane Tuesdays. the version of you that chose differently would also, sometimes, lie awake wondering about the road she didn't take. parallel lives aren't better. they're just untested. and untested things always look clean from a distance.

what you actually have is the one life you're in. the specific, imperfect, unretractable one with all its detours and contradictions. and that life, unlike the parallel ones, has something none of the others do. it's real. it happened to you. it is still happening. and there's something extraordinary about that, if you let yourself notice it.

the parallel lives will always be there in the background, flickering. that's human. but this one, the one you're actually living, only gets this version of you once.

thanks for reading! sincerely,

studybutterfly 🦋💫