She comes at night. When I toss in my bed, staring at the four purple walls that, during moments like these, feel more like a fishbowl, sometimes I turn into her -- the girl I could've been.
If the multiverse is real, there exists a version of me that's a pop star. A version of me that has written a book, and some part that's a lawyer; perhaps I'm already married, or maybe I'm dead. If every time a fork in the road emerged, one version of me wandered down each path, how many different people could I be?
The nature of human regret is to think in terms of before and after. This, of course, hinges on the theory that there's a singular pivotal moment, a reference point that the before and after are relative to. But it never quite works like that, does it -- do I regret the moment I broke the vase, or the moment I decided to play with it? The path that leads to the crime, or the punishment? The fire, or the burns?
She smiles in a way that almost looks like a frown. Is she happy? Nostalgia would tell me yes; it's impossible to remember with vivid accuracy how painful our pasts are -- the rough edges of everything from AP Biology to familial deaths seem to brush themselves out with time. Everything seems better in the rearview mirror, or, in this case, the...portal? I'm not really entirely sure how she got here, I'll confess. Nonetheless, she reminds me of Andy from The Office: "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you leave them."
She looks wiser, too. I can't tell if she knows more or less than me, what advice she has to offer, or what wisdom I should impart on her, so we both remain silent. The most difficult conversations are the ones we'll never have. I can't tell if she seems familiar or foreign -- if I'd recognize her on the streets of New York, or if I'd see her in my mirror in the morning.
I wonder who she is, who she will be, in what twisted way her potential will be fulfilled; I wonder the same of me, but somehow to a lesser degree. We can write letters to our past and future selves, make mental and literal scrapbooks of our toothy smiles and arms slung casually around friends we haven't seen in years, but here, lying next to her, she whispers to me: "forgive me if I take perverse pleasure in the simple fact, that despite it all, you may never know."
I'll never know how infinitely small the gap between me and her truly is.
So, which one of us is the ghost?
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