“The saddest thing about time is not that it passes, but that it never loops back to let you check if you chose right.”
-from a note I wrote at 4 a.m., then forgot!
I. The Room I Visit When I Can’t Sleep
There’s a room in my mind I go to when the night stretches too long and my thoughts refuse to behave.
It’s always the same: Dim light. Shelves that lean. Folders that don’t close properly.
The air smells like paper and things I never said.
It’s a library.
Not of knowledge – but of almosts. All the unlived lives. The paused versions of me. The plans that got parked.
Ideas that never became anything, and things that almost became something and then didn’t. I started building it without meaning to.
A moment skipped, a decision deferred – and somewhere inside, a version of me got boxed away. I don’t visit to feel bad. I go to remember. It helps to know what else I might have been.
(And yes — the metaphor of the library is well-travelled. Borges imagined it infinite. Matt Haig made it a place between life and death. Mine is quieter. Less cosmic. Just a personal filing cabinet of half-lived selves. No magic realism. No guardian librarian. Just me, walking among the what-ifs.)
II. The Lives That Didn’t Happen, But Still Exist
There’s the version of me who stayed. The one who left earlier.
The one who said what needed saying. The one who didn’t.
Some of them still feel close. Others are like distant relatives — familiar, but unreachable.
One of them moved to another city and built a quieter life.
One didn’t fall in love.
One stayed in that relationship and tried harder.
One left faster and never looked back.
They’re not better or worse. Just… alternate versions. Like messy drafts.
Sometimes I think they’re still living, somewhere. Not in a parallel universe. But in the back of my mind, looking at me through the cracks, wondering how they ended up shelved.
III. Things I Thought I’d Do (But Didn’t)
I’ve got entire sections filled with things I meant to do:
* Write a novel.
* Learn french and Spanish.
* Move to a place near the beach or hills where I could start over.
* Call that friend I stopped calling before we even fought.
Some of them still seem possible. Others feel like clothes that wouldn’t fit anymore. They’re not regrets exactly. More like fossils of momentum.
Things I once wanted so badly I made space for them in my mind – but never in my days.
They sit there. Not accusing me. Just waiting to be acknowledged. Some days, I flip through them like postcards from a trip I cancelled last minute.
Other days, I don’t even open the file.
It’s enough to know it’s still there.
IV. What I’ve Learned From the Versions of Me That Aren’t Me
There are versions of me I used to envy.
She seems so sure of herself. That one. The one who said yes to risk. Or the one who chose structure. Or solitude. Or softness. But the longer I sit with them, the more I see it- they were all improvising too. One of them wears linen and looks like she journals before breakfast.
Another is running on caffeine and perfectionism and won’t last the year. They’re not my missed potential. They’re my alternate coping mechanisms.
I used to think having so many possible selves meant I lacked direction. Now I think it just means I’m human.
We carry every version of ourselves, whether we live them or not.
Some show up in dreams. Some show up in how I flinch when someone raises their voice. Some stay quiet until I hear a certain song and suddenly I’m nineteen again, full of intent and no real plan.
V. Why I Keep Coming Back
There are days when I move through the world with clarity. And then there are days when I feel like a draft – half-written, overwritten, written over.
On those days, the room appears without invitation.
I don’t go there to grieve. I go there to sit beside the versions of me that almost were.
But not everything here is gentle.
One night, a few weeks back, the phone rang.
Late. The kind of late that doesn’t ring a bell . I answered. The voice on the other end was friendly, quiet, composed.
“Don’t bring your stuff tomorrow.”
That’s all I heard. Just that. My mind blanked out. Just a sentence that cracked something open and then sealed it shut.
I stopped breathing.
Not metaphorically. My body froze mid-exhale, like it didn’t know how to continue.
That night the door didn’t close – it disappeared. The version of me that was meant to walk through it never got the chance.
And I carry her. Not in sorrow, exactly. More like you carry a photograph of a place you never visited, but once imagined in great detail.
That’s the thing about this library. Some shelves hold the lives I didn’t choose.
Others hold the ones I wasn’t allowed to live. And even those deserve to be remembered.
VI. On the Futility of Closure
Everyone wants closure.
We talk about it like it’s a package you can order, track, and sign for when it arrives. But I’ve never really closed anything.
I’ve paused. Drifted. Swallowed things. Told myself I’m fine.
Some decisions still echo. Some moments still open at the slightest touch, like a wound that never quite scabbed over.
And I’ve made peace with that. Not everything needs resolving.
Some memories just need a place to sit.
Some versions of me just need to be acknowledged – not resurrected, not dissected. Just seen.
VII. The Life I’m Living (Filed Under “Current Draft”)
This life – the one I’m in now – almost didn’t happen.
There were so many chances to take a different turn.
So many tiny moments I barely noticed that quietly led me here.
It’s not perfect. It’s not “the one.”
It’s just the one I stayed with.
And that counts for something.
Sometimes I imagine one of my other selves, living some other life, pulling out a folder titled “Tried anyway. Stayed.”
And maybe she wonders what it would’ve been like to be me.
“Every life we don’t live stays with us, like an unanswered letter we write back to through the way we choose to stay.”