inspired by Begin Again by Helly Acton
today was a lonely day.
i recently moved to a new place & started a new phase of my life. most days, this new life of mine feels beautiful & warm. it feels like golden drops of memories being formed, falling into a jar of honey - thick with nostalgic sweetness, ready to devour by the spoonful when i need it the most.
but today, i felt cold & gray. i scrolled mindlessly on social media for a bit, but then felt this itch to read - to be transported into another world. unwilling to change out of my sweats, i almost downloaded a random book off my ipad for $10…but i knew it was finally time to open a library card in this new place im learning to accept as my new home.
so i compromised with myself - i could stay in my sweats, but i did finally end up going down to the library. it always catches me off guard when im feeling dark and gloomy inside, but it’s crisp & bright outside. children are still running around giggling to themselves, and dogs are still prancing down the street wagging their tongues and tails in sync.
today, it made me feel silly. i thought - there’s such a beautiful world outside, why am i wallowing in my own self pity?
i didn’t think for too long on this. i decided to just be present in the moment and appreciate the sunshine & bustle around me.
i checked out a book called Begin Again by Helly Acton. i randomly picked it because i liked how the title rhymed, and i remembered i’d also watched a wonderful movie named the same thing.
here’s the summary: a young woman named frankie living a seemingly normal & pleasant life is unhappy with her life, and then randomly dies (by accident) in a kebab related situation. i won’t ruin it, no spoilers here! rather than dying, she is transported to a place called The Station, which is where all accidental, untimely deaths go for evaluation. she fell into that category, and so she was offered the opportunity to go straight to the Final Destination (the afterlife of some sorts)…OR she could live 24 hours in 5 different versions of her life.
now here’s where it gets interesting. each of those 5 versions of life are basically the life she would be living if she had made a certain decision at 5 pivotal decision-points of her life. for example, what if she had said yes to her boyfriend that had proposed when they were 23? she got to experience the life she would be living 10 years from that point & see how she liked it. another example - what if she had decided to actually quit her job she was so displeased with? we get the gist.
the author notes section of the book asks “what are some of your begin again moments in life? what if you’d made different choices along the way?”
tonight, as i’m feeling a bit mopey after a challenging day, this is a question im keen on exploring, so im going to come up with 3 of my own begin again moments. some of them are painful to reflect upon, but i think im ready for it.
- the day i had to choose which parent to live with
- the night i decided to finally tell the man who is now my fiancee that i liked him too
- the day i decided to leave medical school
moment 1: i think i was around 9-11 years old. i had never spent much time with my dad growing up - i knew he was a busy, important man at work. i spent most of my childhood with my mom. i knew she & my dad argued a lot, and now they were going to live in separate houses. that day, my dad, seemingly randomly, took me to my favorite park as a child. my favorite memories up until that day were biking around that park, watching the ducks float around the big pond with the fountain. i realized this is still too painful to write down, so im going to stop here.
moment 2: it was november 5th, 2021 at a very close family friend’s diwali party. i had just finished submitting my medical school secondary applications, and i finally felt free.
on exactly that day, a man walked through the door who i had never met before, despite having been friends with this family for over a decade. as these get togethers always go, we were there until almost 2 AM. i remember refusing to make eye contact with this cute new guy until around midnight when the aunties & uncles were deep in discussion that my tired brain could no longer keep up with.
i can’t remember who said something to the other first, but eventually, me & the cute new guy ended up chatting & exchanging numbers so he could invite me to go play volleyball with his group over the weekend.
long story short - a few days later, he asked me out & i politely declined - i’d be moving in a few months, and i didn’t want to start anything i couldn’t see through. we kept spending time together as friends, and i fell for him hard.
one night, as he was driving me back from a movie, we sat in silence in the car. i internally argued with myself - “i’ll tell him that i need to tell him something in 5 minutes, i swear!”. finally, we reached home and i told him i needed to talk to him about something. here’s the moment that everything changed - we stood in the foyer of my dad’s home & i asked him “remember you asked me out earlier? well i’ve been thinking about it…i really am enjoying spending time with you. i thought you’d like to know.”
what if i didn’t? some day 10 years from that day, just like frankie, we’d have a ridiculous argument that brings out the absolute worst in us, and i’ll think back to that exact moment that everything changed between us. what if that moment in my dad’s foyer never happened? would we have stayed friends? would we inevitably have ended up together regardless? would we each have gone on our own paths as near strangers, and we’d bump into each other with our spouses some day at a diwali party hosted by my family friends years later, completely oblivious to the life we could have lived together? what if that was meant to be the “better” path than the path we chose to live together?
moment 3: ive written about this day before - excerpt below:
one day, i slung my backpack over one shoulder and ran downstairs to my car, ready to drive to my favorite study cafe. somewhere along the road, i decided i would get a haircut first - it was time for a change. my hairdresser asked what i do - it took me longer than usual to respond with “im a student”. i tried to avoid sharing that i was a medical student - it led to too many questions that i didnt have the answers to. i looked in the mirror, she’d done a great job. my hair was short, lost almost 6 inches. i paid and got back in my car.
polaroid moment - i called someone i can only describe as my guardian angel sent from the heavens above. she has been my saving grace and a true sister to me during my time in medical school. my car visor mirror was still open, i was musing over my new haircut and picking little hairs off my blue fleece - it felt a lot lighter than before. she picked up and i asked “can i come over?”. i hung up and burst into tears. not the frustrated cries of exam stress or of some other temporary problem to be solved, but a heartbreaking sadness that had been building for far, far longer than i had realized.
i opened the door to her apartment, and i cried my heart out for hours on her couch. she talked me through my thoughts, helped me make sense of them. truth is, i had known for quite a while that i wouldn’t be returning to medical school the following year - for personal and professional reasons i won’t address here. but telling someone meant it was real - it wasn’t just a scary, secret thought in my head anymore. we sat there talking, crying, laughing, and sharing our lives with each other for hours that evening. we desperately needed to study for our exam in less than 72 hours, but in that moment, we just needed to pour our hearts out.
what if on that day that i called my friend, she didn’t pick up? the thought of leaving medicine only turned into action because i had someone to tell that day everything i had been feeling. i let the idea loose into the world, it had been spoken into existence. had she not picked up & had i not gone over to her place that day, would i have just kept it all inside & gone through with the whole degree? would i still be in medical school? would i eventually have become a doctor? what if i ended up loving it, and all my fears & reasons for leaving medicine were false? what if i ended up hating it, living a life of resentment towards myself, that i didn’t leave when i could have? it would have been an entirely new life all together.
at the end of the book, frankie ends up making a decision regarding which life / afterlife she wants to return back to (no spoilers here!). even in my mood today, i think about the lives i could have lived. the life in which i stayed single, the life in which i dated someone else perhaps for a few years, the life in which i became a doctor and loved it, and the life in which i became a doctor and hated it. of course, these are only the big pivotal moments. what i’ve realized is that every single day is a choice, though, and they all add up to those big moments. the key is to own those choices with confidence & to accept their results. that being said, i don’t regret the decisions that have brought me to this point, and i believe i would choose this exact life again…granted, i don’t know how my other lives would look, but i love the life i have now. the relationships, the journey, and the person i’ve grown into as a result of it all.