It Wasn’t Failure ... It Was Redirection (But I Still Grieved It Like Death)

Letting go of a life that could’ve been… still hurts.

I would’ve been a multi-millionaire by now.

If I’d stayed in IT.
If I hadn’t left the structure.
If I hadn't left the Matrix.
If I’d played it safe, climbed the ladder, padded the retirement account.
I knew how to do that life. I was good at it.

And sometimes, I still feel him.
The other me.
The one who took the blue pill.

I feel him most when I want to fund a passion project and the bank account says not yet.
When I look around my office ... the principal, the professional, the structured adult ... and part of my brain whispers… remember when this all made sense?

And that’s when the grief creeps in.
Because it wasn’t just a different job.
It was a different version of me.
A version I never got to watch grow up.

And I miss him.
I miss the clean certainty.
The salary. The system. The illusion of upward.

But I also remember what that version cost.

The stress that triggered my health.
The pressure that whispered louder than my instincts.
The way that life taught me to function ... but never to feel.

I don’t regret leaving it.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mourn it.

Because even when you know something wasn’t meant for you…
You still grieve the life you didn’t live.

The kind of sadness that doesn’t scream.
It sits.
It settles.
And on quiet days… it aches.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand:
That “failure” wasn’t the end.
It was the moment something softer took the wheel.

Because the life I have now?
It’s not linear. It’s not polished.
It’s certainly not millionaire status.

But it gave me something the other life never would’ve:
A full-throttle creativity.
A belief in the unknown.
A way of seeing logic through imagination, not limitation.

That version of me ... the IT engineer ... was still creative.
But that creativity was useful. Functional.
It served deadlines, not wonder.

This one?
This one gets to ask questions no one’s answered yet.
This one believes in something bigger ... and isn’t afraid to sound strange trying to describe it.

So yeah… I miss the other path.
I still mourn him.

But I know now ...
He wouldn’t have survived the storms I did.
And he never would’ve made it here.

And if you’re carrying grief for the life you didn’t live...
you’re not broken.
You’re just human.

You didn’t fail.
You just changed course.
But you’re allowed to cry over the road you left behind.

Even if where you’re headed is exactly where you’re meant to be.