In honor of the lives we would have never lived

I’ve been thinking a lot. It’s what happens when you wake up at 5 a.m. and your brain refuses to let you go back to sleep. It’s a lonely place. In the lonely hours. And when I ran out of things to worry about, the state of the world, my work, my career, our marriage, our mortgage, etc. I ponder the lives I would have lived, well, more so the lives I would have never lived.

I want to start by saying I am extremely privileged, and I know that. I want you to know you don’t have to remind me that I have my home, my house, my family, my job, and I live in a safe country. I know all that. It can be an incredibly lonely place when your confidants and the people you trust constantly dismiss you and your worries as “being dramatic” or “being ungrateful”.

I am grateful. But gratefulness doesn’t negate you from aspiring to make things better, to change things, and to improve things. It’s like telling an immigrant who pointed out challenges and flaws in the system “if Canada is so bad, why don’t you go back to where you came from”. Leaving a toxic place doesn’t mean giving up. “I’ve seen this movie before. You hate a place and you talk about it and then you run away and escape to somewhere else”. As if it was wrong? As if it was cowardice to uproot all your lives, pack it in 3 suitcases, and move 12000 km away?

I mean. If I had been straight and if I had stayed in Vietnam, I would have a wife, kids, and a career that is 5 years ahead of where I am now.

I know it’s not helpful to fantasize about a life that is not ours to lead, one that is far away in a distant parallel universe that we are not allowed to access. I know it’s not productive to stay in a place of grief, for a life that we would have never had anyway because of who we are and the cards we are dealt. I know that. But grieving is a funny process, and grieving for a person with anxiety is an even weirder process. And thanks to the reactions from my close ones, it’s an incredibly isolating and lonely process, too.

“What is grief, if not unexpressed love?” (Andrew Garfield and many others)

What is this grief, if not an unshared sadness of a life I could have had if only I was braver, smarter, better, or different? I can’t tell anyone that I had to pass on the opportunity of a lifetime to be a CTO of a tech scale-up company. I can’t tell anyone that I feel anxious, scared, and helpless in the place that I live in (because that would be over dramatic, liberal-tear-ridden anxiety). I can’t tell anyone that I feel unfulfilled, isolated, and alone, because that would be ungrateful.

So what is it then? And how is it then? Can I express this built-up lump in my chest, pounding away in my brain in the quiet hours of the mornings?

Instead, I shut up and go to work in the morning and be an inspiring leader, a positive force, and help us remain focused on our mission to deliver values in our Agile software development process.

Maybe. Just maybe. The life I miss most of all, and the life I mourned for most of all, is the life where I am loved and taken care of, regardless of what and how much I can do for other people, but simply because of who I am.