By Samantha O’Brien
There are approximately four “If only” Samanthas. Samanthas that might have been a different person, or maybe the same, if she had only done something else. I say four, there’s probably hundreds if not thousands more. A million “if only” Samanthas that carried forward in life after making one miniscule decision over the other. What to have for breakfast that day, if she should fake sick to avoid going to school. I say four because there are only four major instances that current Samantha—you know, me—can think about that might have drastically changed the course of her life had she done something differently.
First, we’ll talk about Band Samantha. Popular culture dictates that there’s a difference between being a “band kid” and a “kid in band”. I think I would like to believe that if Band Samantha had stayed with trumpet when she moved back to public school, she would just be a kid in band. However, fourteen-year-old Samantha was deeply insecure. She felt that every choice she made impacted if she had friends or not: the kind of music she listened to, what television shows she watched, what clothes she wore. So, if having friends meant being a band kid, where you came up with bizarre chants and dances and fell deep into a meme hole, then that’s the kind of person I would have been. Even if it wasn’t who I really was. Who knows who they are at fourteen anyway?
Band Samantha wouldn’t have gotten into marching band. Marching band was probably way more expensive than concert band, and in public school you pay for everything out of pocket. I have mad respect for marching band, and Band Samantha did too, but she wouldn’t have even tried. She had no way to get back and forth to practices, no money to pay for it, and she couldn’t imagine asking her parents. The heels of their worn shoes just scuff the poverty line. She couldn’t handle the looks of disappointment on their faces if she got brave enough to ask. They don’t want to disappoint her, and she doesn’t want the guilt of making them feel bad that they can’t provide.
She probably would have gotten a band scholarship to a good school in state, so that her parents wouldn’t have to worry about finding the money to send her to school. Their credit was practically tanked, far too low for loans. She’d go into music education or something that wouldn’t bring her any joy, because after seven plus years of playing a brass instrument and ruining her lungs by inhaling valve fluid, there would be no room for figuring out what she liked outside of band. Band was her whole life. I’m not sure what happens after that. I hope that eventually she figured out a direction in her life. Married a nice saxophone player or something.
Next, we’ll talk about flirty Samantha. Flirty Samantha decided to be an adult and admit her feelings for a mediocre, nicotine addicted psych dude who played guitar and Pokémon Go. He would have turned her down, probably, because she was a 20-year-old virgin and hadn’t even held hands with a guy romantically much less slept with one. But for a while there, he did seem interested in her. Once, while leaving class together, he lit up a cigarette and asked if it bothered her. She told him no, as her dad smoked since she was a kid, and it didn’t matter to her one way or another. He said he’d quit if she wanted him to. He spent time with her and her friends and asked if it was okay that he and a friend of hers had the same weed dealer. He bent his arms around her at a piano, probably not feeling the stiff anxiety that kept her rigid on the piano bench as he played a song that still ends up on “do not listen” playlists. He sent those cheesy “good morning” texts that stressed her out after about two weeks. He complimented her sweaters, or at least how she looked in them, and he teased her for the music that she listened to. He told her that he never wanted to lie to her.
Which is why, I think (at least I hope), that flirty Samantha would have been miserable had he returned her feelings. She probably wouldn’t be a virgin anymore. Probably wouldn’t feel the shame of having to tell everyone that she still was. She would look back on the joke her friend made the previous school year about sacrificing her to a cult and laugh at it, because neither of them knew that her days of virginal sacrifice would be over soon enough.
She would feel a little less like a freak of nature had she let the nicotine addicted psych dude ruin her.
But at what cost? Would she have been ready for such a commitment? Would she feel differently? Would she pile the emotional weight of losing that sort of precious Thing on the nicotine addicted psych dude, crushing him? Would he leave her? Would she feel empty after he did? Or would she feel like picking up that weight and tossing it aside would make her feel freer. Would she be more susceptible to recognizing the difference between being kind and being flirty, and feel comfortable and confident enough to flirt back? I don’t think she would have, though, because flirty Samantha was already petrified at the idea of one dude flirting with her. Any more than that would have been a nightmare.
Then, there’s the rarely thought of Samantha. The Samantha that would have stayed in New York. Now, this one is a little complicated to imagine because I had no choice in the matter of moving. New York is expensive, and I was only eight years old. Where else would I have gone but with my parents? Still, let’s think about her for a second. New York Samantha, though a little shy and not conscious enough of mental health to figure out that she had underlying anxiety problems, might have thrived. Upon entering fourth grade, she would have not only been turning the same age as everyone in her class, but she would have finally had a class with her best friend who lived across the street. She would have plenty of friends, plenty of parties to go to and after school activities to attend—troop #4951, thank you very much—and all the love from family she could ever want, not having to worry about being caught in her older sister’s shadow for years.
I think she would have grown up at a normal speed. Not too fast or too slow. She would have discovered make up and boys at around an age that would be considered appropriate. She wouldn’t be 26 and still telling people she was allergic because she couldn’t quite figure out just why the feeling of anything sitting on her skin like that makes her want to blow chunks. Only I worry there would be no room for her to be herself. The problem with imagining the hypothetical future of an eight-year-old version of myself is that she hasn’t lived enough life yet. She likes listening to Radio Disney and watching Disney sing-a-longs on VHS. She demands that everyone who enters her home must watch an *NSYNC HBO special taped live from Madison Square Garden. She still watches Playhouse Disney and Nick Jr. shows because no one has told her that they are “too babyish” just yet. She has a Hillary Duff backpack and spends summers in the above ground pool at her godfather’s basement apartment in Brooklyn, bobbing around on floaties and thinking that O-Town is singing about the fictional town of Nearburg on the radio. She plays with Polly Pockets and Bratz dolls and has a massive cardboard box filled with coloring books and loose crayons. The Samantha that stayed in New York could have been a relatively normal, well-adjusted child, but she would have grown up into someone that I don’t recognize. Maybe a Samantha, but not any Samantha that I know.
I would talk about Florida Samantha, the one that decided to stay in state instead of moving to North Carolina with her parents, but there’s not much to say. Florida Samantha probably wouldn’t have made it to college like the Samantha that moved to North Carolina did—you know, me. Florida Samantha would be so sick and anxious over being away from home, from her parents and her sister who still lived in state but would have been too far away. A new, intense experience like college would have destroyed her. Even if she had gone, she probably would have dropped out, and the aunt and uncle she moved in with would have forced her to get a job, probably somewhere local with people she grew up with. People who never left their tiny, wannabe hick town with its old hitching posts and rodeos across the street from McDonalds and high-end boutique stores. Subsequently, she would get into some shady shit. She would live with an intense depression and anxiety that she never recognized because she never had the opportunity to see its horrors from the outside. I would talk about Florida Samantha, but she’s probably dead by now, and I don’t think there’s any sense in dwelling on it.
