Sam’s Journal of Survival

What If

012126.

This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.

What If

Sometimes I let myself think about the what ifs.

Not often. They are dangerous if I stay too long. But sometimes, when the house is quiet and my body feels calm enough, they come anyway.

What if I had healed faster.

What if my body had learned to trust again.

What if touch had not become something that arrived before permission.

I think about him sometimes. Not the ending. Not the disappointment. Just the version of us that existed before my body changed the rules.

I remember the way his hand used to feel familiar. How closeness once meant comfort instead of calculation. How I did not have to think before leaning in.

Those memories do not hurt the way they used to. They feel distant now, like something that happened to a different version of me.

Still, I wonder.

What if I could have stayed.

What if I could have learned to endure it better.

That thought never lasts long.

Endurance is not the same as healing. I know that now. Enduring touch would have meant teaching my body to disappear in small ways, over and over again.

I did enough of that already.

Sometimes I imagine another timeline. One where my body did not freeze. One where love did not require explanation. One where touch was still a language I spoke fluently.

I let the thought pass.

Because the truth is, I chose the only version of the future my body could survive.

That does not mean I stopped wanting closeness. It only means I stopped sacrificing myself for it.

The what ifs still visit. Quietly. Briefly.

Then they leave.

And I am still here.

I chose this because I had to.
I chose to be alone.