Parallel lives are the other versions — the ones that branched off at the choice you didn't make, the relationship you didn't pursue, the city you didn't move to. They don't exist, but they occupy real psychological space. The person who took a different job is somewhere out there, living a version of your life that you occasionally check in on.

Anonymous thoughts about parallel lives posted here are from people who can't stop inhabiting the alternative — the honest account of being haunted by a life that only exists as a what-if.