How would my life be different?

Would you still be here?

If you could go back would you? 

These are the questions that fill up the pages of my thoughts. I ask them profusely—to no one in particular—wondering who I would be if the world didn’t end.

Retrospect has taken its toll on my life, showing me what I had, what I lost, and what it would be like if I could go back; it’s my own personalized ghost of past, present, and future. I am haunted by the decisions I not only didn’t make but was so blinded by that I didn’t even know my options.

So here I am left wondering what version of myself I should be tomorrow, scared that she won’t have the energy to do what needs to get done, withering away as the disappointment sets in. She wonders if we all would have been better off had the world not come to a close. 

And through all of this, I face the saddest part. Even though my questions will forever dangle in the void between my existence and the rest of this puny world, they are and always will be insignificant to the hundreds of faces I used to pass every day. 

However, one question still remains that can be answered: am I better off? I can proudly say right now that I would never go back. I have lost an inexplicable amount of things, but that makes me more average than ever now. We all lost everything—that tends to happen when the world ends—but the difference between me and you is that I gained more than I lost after the dust settled. 

Like a miracle, this beautifully awful life decided to give me ten things to be happy about for every one tragedy that occurs. Are all my questions answered? No. Would my life have been very different? Definitely. Am I better off? probably. Am I happy? Yes. 

Do I know who I am going to be tomorrow? Not a single part of me knows who I was today or who I will be tomorrow, but at least I can say I survived the world ending. I am still here—sad, anxious, and fearful—but more than anything, I am happy to be alive.