The best thing I never wanted

I thought I’d be someone else by now... I'm glad I'm not

I just finished watching 11.22.63 on Netflix and baby…**chef’s kiss**. It was your typical time-travel show: a man travels back in time to save JFK and hopes his decision will make the world a better place. As I watched the finale feeling satisfied, it made me turn the question back on myself: if given the opportunity, what moment, what decision could I go back and change that would’ve made all the difference?

I know enough about time travel to know that changing even one small thing—the path I took that morning, a flirty smile that stayed straight—would change my life forever. But the question still intrigued me. So many moments could have been when everything shifted, for better or for worse.

I was flipping through the Rolodex of memories in my head and thinking about what life could’ve been like when my mind quickly took a sharp turn. What was fun and playful imagination transitioned into an equation made up of pain, longing, and regret, all adding up to one five-letter word: Grief.

I began mourning the places I thought I’d be by now, people I thought I’d have met, experiences I thought I’d have had. The disappointment that those things may never happen carries a weight heavier than a burden, but for a long time, it felt like something best ignored.

I never learned how to grieve.

I learned how to move on. Learned how to keep my head up. But I never learned how to look my younger self in the face and acknowledge the heavy heart she carried.

I never told her that, even though we turned out fine, I’m sorry for all the ways I disappointed her by taking this path instead of the one she laid out. I didn’t stick to the plan, and I owe her an explanation as to why I had to make the choices that led to these outcomes.

It saddens me that even with all the reassurance in the world, I can’t promise her that what lies ahead are greener pastures. All I can give her is comfort and encouragement that we’re exactly where we need to be. But comfort isn’t the same as a guarantee.

When I was 17, Beyoncé taught me to embrace heartbreak as the best thing I never had, but now, as a grown woman, gratitude is showing me how to grieve and accept that this life might be the best thing I never wanted.

The bodega man who knows my order and compliments even my bummy outfits, being packed shoulder to shoulder on a Brooklyn-bound A train, the picturesque view of the skyline in an Uber after a great night out, wasn’t the life I imagined. It was better.

And even on the worst of days, when the car wires get chewed up by city rats, when the door clicks before realizing the keys are on the other side, I take in the vastness of this city and am met with the freedom to reinvent myself over and over each day.

Some nights when I’m alone in my apartment, I still play the “what if” game. I still feel that place in my heart fill up with resentment. But when gratitude meets grief, it creates room. Room to honor what was given up while acknowledging what was gained. Room to learn how to live with the choices we’ve made.

I may never time-travel to the moment when it all happened, but even if I could, there’s no reason to go back.

The life I wanted wasn’t wrong; it just wasn’t mine.

And I’m better for it.