What Might Have Been...

Today I sat in a ski lodge up Logan Canyon that I haven’t been in for almost two years. The last time I was there, a pretty girl was sitting across from me.

This time, she wasn’t.

For full effect, download “Someone Like You” by Adele, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

I would like to add that this is not, I repeat, NOT a “woe is me” swan song for attention due to a harsh lack of the L-word in my personal life. This is simply a remembrance of something that didn’t happen. I would also like to suggest that if you have any masculine traits, or a strong inclination to cry during motivational Nike commercials, it would be best if you closed your Safari browser now.

If you and I have talked about relationships, you are more than likely well aware of my blunder of a break-up known by the simple coined phrase, “Text-Gate”. Yes, I know. I am a fool. Please, don’t rub it in. The girl who was the victim of Text-Gate was the same girl who used to sit across from me at that ski lodge in Logan Canyon. A girl who was the closest I ever came to L-wording someone. A girl who has now moved on in her life.

Again, please don’t label me a softy, a sissy, or any other girly name that fifth-grade bullies abuse during recess. I’m as manly as they come. I can change the oil in my car, kill a spider with my bare hands, and bench press my body weight while a Stallone movie plays in the background, yes, I am a man. However, I write this post only because today I was caught off-guard in a hypothetical puzzle wondering about the outcome of my life; wondering about what might have been.

Things change. We make choices, we deal with the consequences, we move on. That’s the way it’s been since day one. But sometimes, I think that every single one of us has gotten caught up in the heat of reminiscing moments, second-guessing the decisions that we made, and having subconscious debates about how things would have been had we taken a different direction when we came to one of the many monumental forks in the roads of our life.

Now, I’m not questioning my choice in committing the act of Text-Gate, not at all. I still stand by my social media foul-up through and through, 100%. It was the right thing to happen for both of us.

But then again, what if it wasn’t? What if for some crazy, hair-brained, off-the wall, outlandish, lunatic reason I didn’t send that text to her? What if I did change my mind at the last split-second, and ignored what I felt was the voice of reason talking sense to me? What if I didn’t terminally end things with that girl, where would the two of us be right now?

Good question.

Honestly, I would probably have a wife. Maybe a kid? Maybe a house? Maybe getting ready to move across the country to further my education with a PhD, with her at my side? Maybe she would have been with me last year when my Grandfather died, and I would have been with her when she became an Aunt to an adopted child. Maybe the two of us would have been happy. And maybe today in that ski lodge, I would have been looking back into her eyes, probably dropping the L-bomb to her for the thousandth time in our relationship, and not regretting a single moment of our lives together.

But you see, dear reader, that’s not what happened. We went our separate ways. She found a great man to tie the knot with that she adored more than life itself, and today I sat in a ski lodge looking at a guy who just had his second child with my cousin.

Life sure is screwy, wouldn’t you say? That’s the best description I can come up with for this thing that we all wake up to every single morning. Screwy. Don’t doubt me a bit, I L-word my entire life to pieces. And every single thing I have ever done I stand proudly behind, with those choices molding me to becoming the person I am. Call it destiny, call it fate, call it whatever you want, I am exactly where I want to be in my life at this very moment.

But as the night creeps on well after midnight, and the reminiscing silence only grows louder, I can’t help but have an inkling of a second-guess play mind games with me, and ask the never-ending unanswered rhetorical question:

What might have been?