What If…?
Sometimes I lie awake at night and in my head only one almost essential question keeps circling: What if. What if. What. If. While others late at night quietly masturbate or kindly let their partner fuck them into seventh heaven and then drift off to sleep with a faint smile on their face—ready to wake up the next day fit and cheerful to continue successfully building their résumé—I spend the night beating myself up with thinking.
It is always the same question. What if. What if I had made tea instead of coffee this morning. What if I had been nicer to the woman at the station kiosk yesterday. What if I had gotten Apple Music instead of Spotify. What if I had moved to Hamburg instead of Berlin back then. What if I had confessed my love to the cute girl from the parallel class. What if I weren’t so fat. What if I hadn’t cheated on my ex-girlfriends so often. What if I weren’t so lazy. What if I weren’t such an asshole. What if I didn’t think so often about the question of what would have happened if I had done something differently.
In the silence of the dark my thoughts ride a roller coaster, taking every imaginable route I can conceive of, just to show me how much cooler, more successful, and happier I might have been if at some completely arbitrary point in my life I had simply tried a little harder. My career would be more impressive. My girlfriend would be prettier. My house would be bigger. My penis would be longer. My existence would simply be worth more overall. And maybe not quite so wasted.
Companions I haven’t seen for years—maybe even decades—suddenly take shape in my head and reenact where I might have made a devastating mistake back then. Because I didn’t say, do, or think the right thing. And now I receive the mental bill for it. Because in kindergarten I kissed stupid-as-hell Steffi instead of the likeable Anne, just because Steffi was blonde and the other one wasn’t. Because in seventh grade I gave in to peer pressure and spat on Jonas’s back. Because I turned down an interview with German television and instead got drunk on sangria in the park. Because I ignored good advice and let my inflated ego make the decisions.
Life becomes a farce when everything is indifferent to you and you still get away with it. When things somehow work out even though you’re not really making much effort. Your relationship is falling apart because you simply don’t listen? Well, whatever—there’ll be another girl. You don’t have to sleep on the street even though you handle your money as if it had Monopoly printed on it? Well, whatever—the next cash will come along. You don’t have any friends left because you just don’t reply to text messages anymore? Well, whatever—new people will come along.
But what if at some point it’s over? When no more girls, no more money, and no more people come along that you can burn up in your lifelong ego trip? When you’ve taken the wrong turn on the road of your existence one too many times and now you stand in front of the shattered remains of yourself? In a dead end? With only a single thought left that will haunt and mock you for the rest of your life: What if. What if. What if.
The terrible thing is that you don’t actually know what would have happened. Would my life really have turned out better if I had confessed my love to the cute girl from the parallel class? Would we now be living in a townhouse in some suburb with two kids and a dog, going about a completely normal everyday life? Or would we have steered our car into oncoming traffic on the highway during a massive argument?
Would my life really have turned out better if I hadn’t spat on Jonas’s back? Would we have become best friends and still meet twice a year at our regular pub to chat about the good old days? Or would my classmates have mentally destroyed me over the next four years so badly that even today the mere mention of the word “school” would make me burst into tears, gasping for air and calling for my mommy?
Would my life really have turned out better if I hadn’t fallen out with the people who counted on me, who strengthened me and simply wanted to be taken seriously and not ignored? The people who meant something to me and to whom I meant something? The ones who shaped my life? And whom I should at least have listened to instead of brushing their dreams, wishes, and objections aside like trash and going my own way regardless of the consequences?
Sometimes I lie awake at night and in my head only one almost essential question keeps circling: What if. What if. What. If. While others late at night quietly masturbate or kindly let their partner fuck them into seventh heaven and then drift off to sleep with a faint smile on their face—ready to wake up the next day fit and cheerful to continue successfully building their résumé—I spend the night beating myself up with thinking.
And no matter how hard I try, how much I want it, how much I beg for it, this constant rattling in my head doesn’t stop. Time rushes past me, and every decision I made—or didn’t make—pulls me further away from what I once was and wanted to be. I am losing myself. And the more I try to row back, to catch up with and preserve some part of that time, the more it feels cheated, the more it turns into fuel that has only one use: to keep my thoughts running. What if. What if. What if…