In Another World, I Don’t Exist

In another world, my mother does not become a mother — or maybe she does, just not to me.

Photo by River Fx on Unsplash

In another world, I don’t exist.
In another world, my mother does not become a mother — or maybe she does, just not to me. My mother doesn’t meet my father. The trip from Poland to the UK to visit her cousin doesn’t happen. Or maybe it does, but she decides to go to a different bar. Or perhaps my father wasn’t funny enough, or he said the wrong thing or didn’t even try.

In another world, I don’t exist.
She pursues her dream of becoming a journalist and fulfills her ambitions from her photography course. She gets promoted at the newspaper and reports on the fall of Polish communism. Later that year, her journalism leads her to report on the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her photos gain international recognition. She gets to travel with her best friend, who has the same name.

In another world, I don’t exist.
She gets to report on places in Mexico and Japan, eat foreign foods, and stay close to her university friends. She dates, has fun, falls in love a few times, and never settles down. She doesn’t think about the “what-ifs” of life because she’s too busy living it. She never has to take a demeaning job. She doesn’t carry the guilt of not being…