What-if person
"Everybody has a what-if person. It's the boy you turned down when you're nineteen, thinking you could do better than a used Ford car and an Art Diploma. It's the married blonde colleague who sits in the next cubicle and with whom you push the job deadline with. It's the one person who haunts you with thoughts and ideas of how your life could otherwise be. What if.
Surprisingly our brains are wired to think that what-if is a safe and happy zone where rainbows sprout and unicorns fly. It's the unattainable greener side of the fence. And perhaps because it can only exist in the subconscious which makes it all the more desirable, especially at moments when reality is riding hard on you.
The what-if person is mysterious and magical. He/she has the power to evoke such emotions in you that make you want to create a time machine to time travel back to that precise moment which could have turned your whole life around. Maybe it's that minute eons ago when you were fidgeting nervously in the car, deciding on the perfect time to lean in for a kiss, yet when you mustered enough courage, he/she has closed the door on you. Or maybe it's the time when your eyes met and you knew it's the perfect moment to utter the words you've been dying to spill forth but you held back because of pride. These are the people that become your what-if person. What if you had seized the moment and seized that person?
I used to have a what-if person that tortured my soul and gave me no peace of mind. I dwelled in that what-if world so long, wandering alone through upheavals of emotions that knew no boundaries.Perhaps it's a real lack of courage on my part to fight for it but now I believe it's just not to be. The what-if world shouldn't materialise. I'm glad mine didn't.
The only source fueling the existence of that tangible what-if person is discontentment in your day-to-day life. It's really not the what-if person who's tormenting you, it's the person whom you accomodate at your dinner table reluctantly every night and the person whose texts you felt cumbersome to even reply. That is the being who make your what-if person into a delicious fantasy.
Defining Love is beyond me. However I think when your what-if person has completely retreated from your head and you're glad holding a particular someone's hand at this moment on your side of the fence, you couldn't be that far from the shores of love.
For us, without our what-if persons.
Happy birthday wifey!"
