I often wonder what other people’s lives are like. Do they struggle with the same things as me? Do they also feel like the world is on their shoulders? Do they know that even though I have never met them, complete strangers I can only imagine from a plant at an office widow, or a Shiba Inu relaxing on a high rise balcony, that they impact me?

I often worry that I’m not doing enough, or at times doing too much. That I spend so much time worrying about what other people want or need, or what I think they want or need. I worry that I don’t actually pay attention to what they want or need. I worry that I don’t have enough time, like there’s an expiration date I am only subconsciously aware of. One that I’m somehow intrinsically connected to or guided by beyond my need for control. I worry that I won’t be able to stop the end, to protect me and my husband, let alone my family that doesn’t live with me, if I’m not around. 

It all begins with an idea.

I think about the decisions I didn’t make, possibilities and opportunities I no longer have, or never had. I doubt I miss them, I never had them. I think about the “what ifs” more than I care to admit, more than I think is healthy. I wish I knew though, knew how to forget live’s I’ve never lived, to forget people I’ve never met and lovers that I’ve never had the chance to love. Only a fantasy, not one that I want, just one that won’t leave me. A shadow, a duality in me, a liminal space in which only my mind and not my heart exists. I have love, I feel cared for, I like my life and what I have managed to create for myself, for us. Nonetheless, it fires inside of me, the need to ask, the need to wonder, the need to question. A worry, an anxiety, a hunger when I’m full. Why are things the way they are? A butterfly effect of sorts, stirring sugar into my coffee, now the whole world is different, now things are no longer the way they were… they are the way they are, but now they aren’t like they were before. A conversation with a stranger, deciding to switch the side of the road I walk on, they all leave behind memories that aren’t mine. The sensation of snow falling on my skin, a shoulder, exposed to the elements on a porch, a mountain cabin where he and I live full-time. The voice of a neighbour, a story I make up inside my head of what their lives must be like, how I fit into it, or don’t. Exerting a control that has managed to control me.