Another version of me.

I like to believe there are more universes than just the one I’m living in right now. Somehow, that thought makes it easier to breathe. My life has never been simple, maybe that’s why I started dreaming beyond it so early. I don’t just want a good life. I want an incredible one. I want to travel, to leave my hometown behind, to see places that don’t carry memories like weights on my chest.

Everyone else seems to move forward while I feel stuck, held in place by everything I come from. My childhood home didn’t just hurt me, it made me feel sick inside. Lost. Small. Trapped. So I tell myself somewhere, in another universe, there’s another version of me who made it out whole. Someone who is free. Someone who isn’t tired all the time from just surviving.

I’m not wishing for a perfect life, just a fair chance. A lighter path. Strength without scars. Hope without fear.

Home was never safe. My stepfather’s anger filled every room. Nothing we did was ever right. There was always shouting. Always tears. I became “the difficult one”, while my sister was the angel, and maybe she was. But we were both just children trying to endure something too heavy for us. Too much pain can drown a house like an ocean.

In another universe, I imagine love feels easy. Happiness feels normal. And my potential doesn’t go to waste.

Sometimes, dreaming is the only way I remember who I could still become.

Sometimes I wonder how different a life can turn with just one small chance, one different decision, one kinder word, one door that opens instead of closes. Maybe in another version of my story, someone noticed sooner. Maybe someone listened. Maybe I learned earlier that leaving is not betrayal, it’s survival.

There are nights when the past comes back like an echo through thin walls. Not loud, just constant. A pressure behind the ribs. But I’m learning something strange: echoes only exist when you keep standing in the same empty room. Step far enough forward, and the sound can’t follow. I hold on to that idea when things feel heavy, that movement itself is kind of healing. Even slow movement. Even crawling counts. Progress doesn’t have to look heroic to be real.

I collect small promises to my future self. I will see the ocean in winter. I will live in a place where my nervous system can finally rest. I will build a circle of people who speak gently when they’re angry. I will learn what it feels like not to be afraid of the next sound behind me.

Maybe the other universe version of me isn’t luckier, maybe she’s just braver, a little earlier.

And if universes really do multiply with every choice, then maybe I’m creating hers right now. Step by Step. Breath by Breath. Not escaping my story, rewriting it.

Not a wasted potential. Not a broken beginning. Just an unfinished becoming.