Pinpoint a moment in your past where you had to make a big decision. Write about that other alternate life that could have unfolded.
Photographers, artists, poets: show us OTHER.
In November 1992, I made the decision to quit my job in New York State and move to Texas and marry a former co-worker. I would be taking a job in San Antonio, Texas with a private educational testing firm. I was uprooting my entire life and moving half-way across the country to marry a man I thought I knew. It was the biggest mistake of my life.
If I had not married this man, I would have kept my job in New York at the State Education Department. I was reasonably happy there. It wasn’t the ideal job but I liked it and I did a good job.
I would have been around to care for my daughter. She would not have had to go to live with her father, who decided to embark on an affair with another teacher and embarrass her at school and therefore she acted out. She may have acted out anyway but perhaps I could have helped control it. She ran wild with her boyfriend with no supervision. That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone to Texas.
We would have stayed in our little house in Colonie, New York and been quite happy. My daughter would still have been involved with her boyfriend and would still have not wanted to go to community college but she would have had a place to live while she worked. Our life would have been good.
Life would have been gone on as before. I would not have gone through culture shock in moving to Texas and having everything I believed in challenged daily and being looked at as a foreigner every day. That was very upsetting. It was hard not fitting in in Texas. I have been here 20 years and I still don’t fit in. It’s still a bit of a culture shock some days. There are many days I long to be back in New York. I don’t want to ice and snow and the taxes. But I do want normal people and attitudes. Sometimes Texas is too much to take.
My life is here in Texas now. My daughter and granddaughters are here in San Antonio. I wouldn’t want to leave them. But I could have easily stayed in New York and made a nice life for myself in Albany at my job in my little house. I would be near my brother and sister in Utica, New York. I do miss them. So life would have been different. A maybe a little better. There wouldn’t have been so much heartache.
My Life, Such As It is 
No one can say for certain what the future holds. You may have wound up in an even bigger mess had you stayed put.
Don’t look back. Eyes forward, little lady!
The grass is always greener…