The what ifs

I wonder sometimes about the what ifs of my life. I know people would question at my age how many there could really be, but there are still a lot. I don't believe in predestination and if there is fate I'd like to think its more like the Moirai spinning, measuring and cutting our threads of life, not controlling the choices we make. Every single instant of our lives is filled with infinite choices. Continue writing this or straighten my hair. Wear heals to work today or flats. The little choices we make everyday, cheerios or chex, aren't the ones that follow us. They aren't the ones that haunt our every moment. They aren't the ones that shape and change who we are as a person.

I wonder sometimes. What if I had told that one boy in middle school that I liked him, would I be married with a pile of kids, would I be any different than I am right now. I heard once you never regret the things you've done only the things you were too afraid to do. But what if it wasn't fear that made you choose not to do something and isn't every choice to do something subsequently a choice not to do another thing. There is more than one side to every coin, especially when the coin looks more like an infinitely sided die.

Every element of who I am as an individual was shaped and altered by my experiences and environments. How can I pick a single moment and say if I did this instead of that I wouldn't be commitment phobic, if I walked instead of ran that day I wouldn't feel this way about that. Rationally I know that any one moment doesn't determine the rest of my life. It's the million different moments, its the billions of choices and how I react to the outcomes that shapes who I am as an individual.

Still, despite all rationale, despite even my better judgement I wonder. When I wake up in the morning and when I lay my head down at night; what if I dropped out of college when he asked and went with him. What if I followed the man who stole my heart. Would I still be me and would he still be dead. It's this one choice I made almost four years ago that makes me daydream about do-overs. Even though I know whether I'd followed him or not, the outcome would still have been the same. I still wonder. I know he would still have been there when the IED went off and would still have been here. But I can't help but think What If.