“The Person I Almost Became”

The Person I Almost Became

By [Ali Rehman]

There are moments in life when I catch a glimpse of someone I recognize, someone who moves like me, thinks like me, even dreams like me—but isn’t me. A shadow-version of myself walking in the margins of my memory. A life that could have been mine if I had turned left instead of right, said yes instead of no, stayed instead of leaving.

I meet this other self in the quiet places—early mornings before the world wakes, or late nights when I sit alone with nothing but the hum of the world to keep me company. It is in these moments that I think about the person I almost became.

When I was younger, choices felt small. A skipped class here, a late-night decision there, opportunities that I dismissed because I thought there would always be more. I didn’t know that life was taking notes, collecting these tiny choices and arranging them into paths that diverged farther and farther apart. Back then, I believed I had all the time in the world to become whoever I wanted.

And then one day, I looked up and realized I had become someone—just not the someone I had expected.

There was a time I imagined myself fearless. I used to think I would travel endlessly, collect stamps in my passport like souvenirs of my courage. I pictured myself standing in sunlit airports, carrying nothing but a backpack and a heart full of possibility. But the truth is, fear found me early. Not the loud kind with screaming sirens, but the quiet kind—the fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unpromised. So I stayed.

The person I almost became? They left. They boarded that flight I never had the courage to take. They walked through foreign cities with a kind of confidence I never learned to wear. They met people I’ll never know, lived stories that will never belong to me.

Sometimes I envy them.

And yet, in other ways, I imagine they envy me too.

Because they never stayed long enough to build a home the way I did. They never grew roots in the soil of relationships, never built the kind of steady happiness that comes from familiarity. Their life was full of movement—but maybe not grounding. And I realize then that every version of ourselves gives something up to gain something else.

There was also the version of me that said “yes” to a love that I walked away from. I still think about that sometimes—a quiet life with someone who held me gently and believed in the softer parts of me. That version of me learned how to build a shared life, how to merge dreams instead of running with only my own. But that path required sacrifice I wasn’t ready to make. So I left. Not because it was wrong, but because I wasn’t ready to be that version of myself.

The person I almost became? They stayed. They chose love over independence, warmth over wandering. And maybe they are happy. Or maybe they wake up some mornings and wonder who they might have been if they had walked away like I did.

Then there is the version of me who chased a career with relentless fire. The one who never doubted, never slowed down, never questioned the cost of ambition. That version of me lives in a high-rise apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows, the city glowing beneath their feet. They are admired, respected, maybe even envied. But in the reflection of their glass office, they are alone more often than not.

And here I am—simple, imperfect, but surrounded by people who remind me what life feels like when it’s shared.

I don’t think any version of us has everything.

The more I reflect, the more I realize that the person I almost became isn’t a ghost meant to haunt me—it’s a reminder. A collection of possibilities showing me that life is not a single straight line but a branching tree, full of paths I might have walked.

And perhaps the saddest thing is not that those versions of me will never live—it’s that I didn’t know, while making my choices, that I was closing the door on entire lives I would never get to touch.

Yet there’s beauty in this too. Because the person I am now is not an accident. I am a mosaic of every path I took and every path I abandoned. For every version of me that wandered off in another direction, a lesson remained. For every door that closed, another opened. For every dream I didn’t chase, I found a different one waiting for me.

Sometimes I still meet that other self in my mind—standing at a train station I never visited or sitting in a home I never lived in. I wonder if they look back at me with the same curiosity. Maybe they think I am the version they almost became.

Maybe, in their quieter moments, they think of me the way I think of them.

And perhaps that’s the real truth:

There is no “right” version of ourselves—only the one we choose to become.

The person I almost became is still out there, living softly in the corners of my imagination. But so am I—living here, in this moment, shaped by the choices I made and the ones I let slip away.

Moral:

Every version of you carries a lesson, but only one gets to live. Choose with courage, and honor the paths left behind.