Do you ever wonder how different your life would be if a certain event happened/didn’t happen? What is that event?

26 comments

  2. Back in grade 8, I was trying out for the basketball team.

    During the tryout period, I broke my ankle (during gym class), never got past try outs, but I HIGHLY believe I would have made it on the team and even been a starter.

    ​

    I believe this event drastically changed the course of my life as I would have learned a lot about myself through being on the basketball team at this age, going into high school. I would have been more confident with myself and my relationship with others.

  4. I used to flip a coin when I couldn’t make decisions. The caveat is that if I flip the coin and look at the results, I have to go with that result.

    So a couple years into college I had to decide between two internships, one in Wisconsin and the other in California. I flipped a coin, and while it was flipping I thought for a brief second that maybe I would prefer Wisconsin, so I shouldn’t look at the result. Well the moment passed and I ended up looking at the coin. Soon after, I called to accept the position in California, where I met my wife.

  5. I almost went to see a psychiatrist when I was about 15. Instead I waited until I was 28 to start addressing my problems, meanwhile more damage had been done. I sometimes wonder if I could’ve had a better youth

  7. Lived in a small town, Was a problem child, got arrested at 12 and spent 9 months in a state program that actually set me on a more straight path. Within 2 weeks of finishing the program and being released my mom packed us up and moved back to our home state. Always wondered where I’d be now if that didn’t happen. Got curious about what all my friends from then were up to now few years ago, found out probably 6 out of 8 people are either in prison, spent time in prison or dead.

  8. I have a friend I’ve known since maybe 3rd grade. At one point, I got him a job where I was working, but then I moved away.

    He met someone at that job who got him hours at a different place.

    I then moved back into town and was looking for work. He got me hours at that new place where he has worked his way up a bit. He then moved on and I took his position. I continued up in the ranks there and ended up working there 10 years and I went to school in that field and got a master’s degree.

    So basically any link in that chain of events, I could have a completely different situation right now.

  9. When I decided to adopt my dogs

    They bring light into my life and I wouldn’t change anything, not even the worse thing that happened to me if it doesn’t allow me to have them

  11. I ponder this almost weekly.

    Where I lived there was a college one mile from my house. However about 20 minutes away in the bigger city, there was a community college.

    The one near me is Frostburg State Uni. At the time it was more known as a teaching and business school.

    The community college, Allegany College of MD, was better for computers and health care. Due to these difference, I chose ACM because I wanted to work in healthcare.

    Had I chose to stay within a mile of my home I would not have met my wife, met the friends I still hang out with almost daily, have the job and life I now live if I never made the 15-20 minute drive to college when I was 18-19.

  12. After graduation I applied, and was accepted into, my uni and course of choice. And then my grandad, who was still working in the family law firm with my dad, got (re-?) diagnosed with cancer at roughly the same time that both of their secretaries were quitting.

    So I put off going to uni to work there for a year to help out.

    ​

    I saw my grandfather die up close, I saw my dad in his grief completely fall apart, become an agressive alcoholic and totally unable to function in society, to the point where he lost his license not long after and tried to scam me out of 1000’s of € (even though I already took very little money for a lot of work). That, plus the fact that I couldnt apply for student housing cause I wasnt enrolled yet led me to end up homeless & couchsurfing for half a year aswell, when my mom decided on *extremely* short notice that she wanted to move in with her boyfriend.

    Overall I was financially worse off, mentally scarred and had relationships within my family pretty irreparably damaged.

    Six years later the ripple effects of that single decision are still very much felt all the time, and only since quitting uni (temporarily) and starting to work this summer have i felt as good as before making that decision.

    ​

    That’s not to say I was blameless in all of this, but essentially I was put into an extremely shitty situation and i handled it poorly. And I cant help but think all of this could’ve been avoided if I had chosen differently back then.

  13. My early/mid 20’s – bad ankle injury –>really derailed being a distance runner and I spiraled a bit for a while as I didn’t know how to cope with that.

    Also college- I was smart but high school didn’t teach me how to be a student—> I was sinking and was figuring i’d be one those barely get by, graduate, get good job anyway cuz biochem. But my dad was pissed and pulled me from college to go closer to home. It worked out well in the long run, but things could have been a bit different — not sure if good or bad though haha

  14. Yup. I ended up falling in my home, which resulted in the compression fracture on my vertebrae. All because I was trying to kill a spider.

  16. Should have started with judo when i was 6instead of karate. Maybe i would have been an olympian then.

  17. If I hadn’t redownloaded Bumble because I didn’t have a gut feeling that the girl I was dating was still on the app, I wouldn’t be in the relationship I’m in now, nor the job I have now and I might still be living with my parents.

  18. 1. If I stuck with basketball over swim team.

    2. If I went into the Navy rather than College. I had a blast in college and have a nice well paying job but it’s just curiosity.

  19. The agony of choosing. I play scenarios on my head as to possible outcomes of other options I had way back. And it kinda makes me curious to see what could have happened

  20. When I was a child I caught measles, it left me learning and memory difficulties.
    If I was like my siblings l probably would have gone into law or business.
    Didn’t find out that I had brain damage until I was 40, just got used to thinking I was slow.
    Get vaccinated I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through my life

  21. If my mom didn’t have a stroke in my 2nd year of college. Her health has gone slowly downhill since then and it’s taken my mental health along with it.

  23. I think it happens during the first trimester, but there’s something that goes on which causes your brain to develop a gender different from the rest of your body. So I’ve lived a very unusual life in a very hostile culture…it’s been hard. I’m not saying I want to be a cisgender woman (god no), but that I’ve wondered what it would be like to not have dysphoria, to have been able to have grown up feeling secure and at peace, and not deal with all the transphobia. Maybe this period in my development was already written into my genes, but I do wonder what life would have been like.

  24. I sometimes wonder how my life would have been if my father hadn’t been an alcoholic… Would I have been the same person I was while growing up? I’ve been taking therapy for almost a year, I never really understood my emotions until now (28)

  25. When I was 12 years old playing football, I ran face first straight into another guy that was also sprinting. My nose got smashed by his forehead very badly. It didn’t immediately break, but over the years my whole skull grew with a slight bend to it. No one took me to a doctor to maybe have a look at it. When I got to 17-18 I became extremely self conscious over it and always wondered how I’d look if that never happened, or if I got my nose fixed right after so it could grow ‘correctly’.

    It lead to years of lower self confidence with women and insecurities. My parents are both very good looking people so I’ve always wondered how things would be for me if it never happened. Luckily I developed myself in other areas so once I hit 20 I didn’t really have any struggles with getting women, but still.

  26. I started having seizures in my sleep a few months before I turned 23. I’m 37 now.
    I was in college and things were going well. The ensuing hospital visits, medical bills, medications, restrictions on my life, all started a spiral into depression that lasted around 5 years. I was suicidal at times. I’ve learned to live with it but I feel like I lost my 20’s, a time I’d looked forward to.
    I do wonder what my life would have been like had that never happened. Would I have finished college? What career would I have? Where would I be living?

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