There’s a version of me that wakes up earlier.
She moves through her mornings with intention, coffee made slowly, sunlight touching the kitchen bench, her phone left face down. She replies to messages on time. She says yes to opportunities without overthinking them. She doesn’t hesitate the way I do. She doesn’t replay conversations hours later, editing herself into something sharper, clearer, better.
I don’t know exactly when our lives split. It wasn’t a single decision, not a dramatic turning point. It was smaller than that, quieter. A series of almost.
Almost applying for that course.
Almost saying what I meant.
Almost staying. Almost leaving.
That’s the strange thing about becoming someone: you don’t always notice when you’re not.
The person I almost became exists in fragments. She lives in drafts I never finished, in plans that felt too big at the time, in versions of conversations where I said the right thing at the right moment. She’s built from hesitation, from caution dressed up as practicality. From fear that sounded reasonable enough to listen to.
Sometimes I think she’s better than me. Not in a dramatic, self-destructive way, but in the quiet, comparative way that slips into your thoughts when you’re alone. She’s more decisive. More certain. Less afraid of being misunderstood.
But then I wonder if that’s true, or if I‘ve just made her easier to admire by keeping her unfinished.
Because the truth is, I don’t know her fully. I only know the highlights, the imagined outcomes where things worked out, where risks paid off, where every choice led somewhere meaningful. I don’t see her failures. I don’t see the versions of her that got things wrong, that hurt people, that had to sit with the consequences.
Maybe she exists the same way I do: uncertain, inconsistent, trying.
We talk a lot about regret like it’s something sharp and obvious, something you can point to and name. But more often, it’s softer than that. It’s not “I made the wrong choice.” It’s “I wonder what would’ve happened if I didn’t.”
Not knowing can feel heavier than knowing.
There are moments where I feel closest to her. Not when I‘m doing something extraordinary, but when I act without overthinking. When I say what I mean before I have time to reshape it. When I choose something just because it feels right, not because I‘ve calculated every possible outcome.
In those moments, she doesn’t feel separate from me. She feels possible.
I think that’s what I‘ve misunderstood about her all this time, that she’s not a fixed alternate version of me living some better life. She’s not ahead of me or behind me. She’s not someone I failed to become.
She’s just made of the choices I haven’t taken yet.
And maybe that’s the point.
Maybe we’re not meant to become one single, final version of ourselves. Maybe we’re always existing alongside these almost-selves, these possibilities that stretch out in different directions. Not as reminders of failure, but as evidence that there’s still movement, still change, still room to shift.
The person I almost became isn’t gone.
She’s just not finished.
And neither am I.
Maybe there was never meant to be one final version of us, no clean, completed self waiting at the end of all the right to choose. Maybe we are always mid-formation, always carrying past versions and possible futures at the same time.
Not a fixed person. Not a finished story.
Just someone still becoming.
This was written by our contributing writer, Alisha Blanch.
Image Source: Unsplash, Raphael Victor
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