What If...?
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and one almost essential question spins endlessly in my head: What if...? While others quietly masturbate late at night or are kindly taken to the seventh heaven by their partners, drifting off with a faint smile before waking refreshed to expand their successful résumés, I spend the night thinking. What if I’d made tea instead of coffee? What if I’d been nicer to the woman at the train kiosk yesterday? What if I had chosen Spotify over Apple Music? Moved to Hamburg instead of Berlin? Confessed my love to the cute girl next door? Read more books? Not cheated on ex-girlfriends? Not been lazy? Not been an asshole? What if I hadn’t spent so much time pondering what might have been?
In the dark, my thoughts race like a rollercoaster, taking every possible route to show me how much better, happier, and more successful I might have been if I’d tried harder at some random moment in my life. My career would be bigger. My girlfriend prettier. My house larger. My existence more valuable. Old companions I haven’t seen for years appear in my mind, replaying moments where I might have made terrible mistakes. I kissed the stupid Anne instead of kind Zoe. I spat on Kevin in seventh grade. I ignored advice, got drunk in the park, let my ego decide. Life becomes a farce when nothing matters, yet everything works. Relationships fail, money is fleeting, friends vanish – but what if one day, nothing comes?
The worst part is that I don’t know what would have happened. Would life have been better if I confessed to the girl next door? Would we now have two kids and a dog in a suburban townhouse? Or would we have crashed our car in a fight? Would life have been better if I hadn’t spat on Kevin? Would we still be friends, meeting twice a year at our old bar? Or would classmates have tormented me for years, leaving me trembling at the word “school”? Would life have been better if I’d treated those who mattered to me with more respect? No matter how much I try, this endless rattle doesn’t stop. I lose myself, and my thoughts keep running: What if...?