The Multiverse

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to sit on a cloud and just…watch my life unfold below me. Not in some deep, spiritual way—more like scrolling through the multiverse versions of my own Instagram feed. 

Each version of me is down there, doing her own thing, completely unaware I’m up here, judging her life choices with a bag of chips in hand. 

The first me: the responsible one. She really has it together. She married her college boyfriend right after graduation, just like everyone expected. 

They live in a cozy two-story, in a quiet suburban town, right in between their parents’ towns. The kind of town where everyone waves when they drive by, and the Walmart employees know your name.  

She walks her golden retriever, Mufasa, every morning before work, decorates for every holiday like it’s a competitive sport, and posts #grateful selfies next to her husband at pumpkin patches. 

Her life is calm, predictable, and safe. She’s got a five-year plan and a mortgage to match it. But when I look closer, she seems…a little too practiced. Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. It’s like she’s built the life she thought she was supposed to live and then realized it wasn’t as shiny as it looked from the outside. 

Then there’s the version of me who did the exact opposite: She packed a suitcase and left right after college graduation. No plan. No goodbye party. Now she bartends in beach towns and moves every few months, chasing the next ocean view. 

Her skin’s painted with hues of rose across her cheeks. Her hair smells like saltwater and tequila, and she owns more stories than she does belongings. She spends her nights serving drinks to travelers who tell her about their lives, and sometimes she flirts back just to feel alive. 

She never falls in love, not because she can’t, but because she doesn’t stay anywhere long enough for it to find her. Her only constant is a scruffy gray cat that follows her from place to place, as if even he doesn’t want her to be alone. She’s carefree to the point of recklessness, spontaneous to the point of scary. But she’s living—fully, wildly, and maybe a little too much. 

And then there’s the third version—the one I think I’m becoming. She took a different kind of leap. She didn’t run away from life or rush to build it. Instead, she built it slowly, intentionally, out of moments that mattered. 

She teaches English to kids in places she only used to see on Pinterest, collecting small stories and laughter along the way. Her apartment changes every year. Sometimes it’s a shoe box, sometimes it has a view, but it always feels like hers. 

She learns words in new languages, falls in love with street food and sunsets, and writes postcards she never remembers to mail. She doesn’t have everything figured out, but she’s content with that. She’s living in motion, grounded in her uncertainty. 

From my little seat in the clouds, that’s the version I’d root for. The one who doesn’t have to know what comes next to feel at peace. The one who’s learning that you don’t need a map when you finally trust your own direction. 

And maybe, tucked between all those versions, there’s a smaller part of me who’s still learning what “being myself” really means. The girl who once thought she had to follow a straight line: get the degree, find the job, marry the guy. She’s starting to realize that life’s better when it doesn’t go according to plan. 

Maybe she falls for someone unexpected. Maybe she moves somewhere she never thought she would. Maybe she just stops trying so hard to get it all right. 

The funny thing about sitting on a cloud is how easy it would be to stay there. To keep watching, analyzing, and imagining how every choice plays out. But the longer I’d sit there, the more I’d start to feel like a spectator in my own life. 

Safe, yes. But disconnected. 

The real stuff—the laughter, the heartbreak, and the surprises. It all happens down on the ground. Not up in the clouds. 

So maybe I don’t need to see every outcome. Maybe I don’t want to know which version of me “wins.” I think I’d rather climb down, stretch my legs, and walk straight into whatever version of life is waiting for me. One decision, one lesson, and one moment at a time. 

• #career
• #future
• #girlhood
• #job
• #life