Sliding doors: the 3 moments in my life that I still think ‘what if’

What if I had never left my hometown? 

I grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut and never could have pictured myself living anywhere else. But I was forced to uproot my life and move three towns over during my junior year of high school. For the first time, I was in unfamiliar territory, and no matter how much my mom tried, I would never grow to love this new place, let alone like it. 

I missed my high school. I didn’t pose in pictures with all my friends I had known since I was five for prom or graduation photos. My senior yearbook was lacking signatures and well wishes by the people who knew me longest and best. It was awful, at least I believe it was back then. And I made sure my family, especially my mother, knew how much I hated the move. But if I had never left, I wouldn’t have come to learn the value of new beginnings. 

This first, life alternating change would prepare me for all the changes and newness to later unfold, like transferring colleges and eventually moving out of state. I think we can all agree that change is hard, but it’s necessary to grow. Still, there are moments I wonder if I had never left my hometown, would that have made things better or worse?

What if my brother was still alive?

My brother was killed when he was eleven years old. I wasn’t alive when it happened. I was born in 1990, just three years after his death. And ever since I was a child, everyone in my family would tell me how much I resembled the brother I never got the chance to meet.

Now that I’m thirty years old and five years into grieving the loss of my mother, I often think about how life would have been different if my brother was still alive. Would he have been the one answering that dreadful call in the early hours of the morning that could be nothing but bad news? Would he have been the one to plan my mother’s funeral? I have an older sister, but due to her disability and her fragile relationship with my mom, I was raised to be the one to take care of things if anything were to happen. So if my brother were alive, would that heavy burden have fallen on him instead?

If my brother were alive, would I have dealt with less heartbreak? 

Would I have become less of a target for men who preyed on young and naïve women?

Would I have understood the rules of football and basketball? And actually enjoy watching a game.

Would I have had a trusted man in my life to walk me down the aisle and give me away?

These are just a few questions I have thought of over the years. Sometimes it’s nice to imagine what could have been. And as much as it bothered me as a child when someone would tell me how much I reminded them of my brother Shami, I just wish I could have known that for myself. 

What if my first kiss was with a different guy instead?

I didn’t know my first kiss was going to happen until the guy who kissed me slammed his lips into mine. I was shocked. It was my very first kiss, and I didn’t know what I was doing. The guy who kissed me was the guy I had been crushing on for a few months during seventh grade.

I remember after he kissed me and he fled to catch his bus, I thought, “that’s it?”.  Then a different guy came to mind, and I nearly cried right there in the middle of an abandoned stairwell. I had missed my chance at a perfect first kiss. And it was all my fault. 

A year prior, I was doing my best to fight any feelings I had for a guy who lived in my neighborhood with whom I shared the same bus stop. He was loud, popular, and a jokester. I was quiet, shy, but friendly enough that I had a decent amount of friends. He would always do stupid things on the bus ride home to get people to notice him. I always did. Everyone did. And one day, he began to notice me too. 

At first, the attention wasn’t great. He would tease me, and it was funny at first but quickly became annoying. Since we shared mutual friends, I thought the best tactic was to ignore him completely. So that’s what I did. But as time went on, something shifted and we both began to look forward to our bus ride home together.

The week of my 12th birthday, it became a thing for him to toss me across his shoulder and attempt to throw me into a nearby bush when we got off the bus at the end of the day. Every time, I would scream and swat for him to put me down. And when he finally did, we looked at each other for a moment and then turned in opposite directions towards our respective homes. 

But three days before my birthday, he decided to bother me a bit longer by walking towards my house. Instead of trying to throw me in a nearby bush, he was asking me what I wanted for my birthday. “Your watch,” is all I said. I didn’t really want it, but I knew how much he loved that thing. Seeing through me, he kept pestering me to tell him what I truly wanted. I was just not ready to admit the truth. 

We made it halfway up my street and stopped under a hemlock tree. With my back against the bark, he came closer to me and asked one final time what I wanted for my birthday. There was no trace of humor in his eyes. I wanted him, and it was clear he felt the same. All I had to do was to lean into him, but at the last second, I shrunk back. I was afraid everything this kiss could mean or wouldn’t mean come tomorrow. 

Luckily or not so luckily, my younger sister had just gotten off her bus and was making her way up the street. When she spotted me, she ran over to us. Then I heard my mom calling out my name five doors down, wondering what I was doing. To this day, my younger sister claims that she caught me kissing the boy from down the street. Every time, I correct her and say that we didn’t. But every time I do, a part of me wonders what would have happened if it were true.