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A short guide to kindly breaking up with your alternate selves.

There I am, up on the stage. Here I go, playing star again. Bob Seger sang about the spotlight, but it could just as well be about the roads not taken — the ones we keep performing for long after the curtain’s closed.

There’s a kind of nostalgia that shows up uninvited, like smoke from a candle you thought you’d already blown out. It carries the scent of things you almost became — languages half-learned, careers left unopened, people who might have known you differently. You don’t chase it, but it lingers anyway, hanging in the air like it still has something to say.

It doesn’t shout, this nostalgia — it hums. Sometimes it plays as background noise when life goes quiet: the bus ride, the shower, the late scroll through someone else’s milestones. You tell yourself it’s harmless curiosity, but beneath it runs the quiet fear that your life is just a backup plan in your own multiverse.

You start to realize how loyal the mind can be to unfinished stories. It keeps replaying scenes that never happened, patching together highlight reels from choices you never made. The memories aren’t real, but the emotions are — envy without a target, nostalgia without a past. And somehow, that feels heavier than regret itself.

It would be easier if unlived lives faded like old receipts, but they always seem to join a loyalty program. Every time you make peace with one path, another sends a we miss you notification. You’d think the mind could at least let expired dreams go quietly, but no — it’s running a full customer-retention campaign.

Maybe a way out isn’t to ignore those alternate versions but to give them a proper farewell party? Balloons, a playlist, maybe a PowerPoint titled Paths We’ll No Longer Be Taking. Let them know they were loved, then point them toward the exit. Closure doesn’t have to be heavy; sometimes it just needs decent catering and a well-curated guest list.

When you make closure official, you stop living with squatters. Those alternate selves have been freeloading on your mental bandwidth, paying no rent and leaving passive-aggressive notes about ambition on the fridge. Declaring the lease over doesn’t erase them; it just gives your current life back the keys.

The benefits pile up fast. You start sleeping better, because you’re no longer sharing dreams with five imaginary roommates. Decisions get easier, too — fewer committee votes from the ghosts of maybe someday. Even your mirror gets friendlier; it’s nice not having to compete with the version of you who definitely does sunrise yoga and drinks green smoothies on purpose. Once the past gets its farewell cake, the present finally looks you in the eye and says Right, now, where were we?

The roads not taken have served their purpose. They showed you where you could’ve gone. Now they can rest — you’ve got somewhere else to be.

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