Halloween is for pretending.
That’s the whole point. You get to be someone else for a night. A pirate. A ghost. A sexy hedge fund manager. Whatever you want.
You slip into the costume and, for a few hours, abandon your real life. You hand out candy. You drink something warm that used to be fun. You make small talk with neighbours dressed as bees.
But the older I get, the more I think the real costumes aren’t the ones you buy.
They’re the lives you almost had.
The ones that still hover around you like ghosts with opinions.
You know the ones
The job you didn’t take.
The city you didn’t move to.
The person you didn’t marry because it made too much sense.
You think you’re over it—until you scroll past someone else living the life you could’ve had if you’d just been slightly braver, or slightly more reckless, or slightly less in love with stability.
And suddenly you’re three drinks deep in the costume of That Other You.
The one who stayed. Or left. Or said yes. Or said no.
There’s a version of you that took the risk
She lives in Berlin now. She wears good boots and doesn’t overthink emails. She has one perfectly aloof cat and a fling with a woman named Elise who writes poems on napkins. You don’t know why, but she always smells faintly like cardamom.
There’s another version who stayed in your hometown.
She married the guy who knew her before she had opinions about grout colour. She has three kids, a seasonal wreath, and a group text with women who met in prenatal yoga. Her life is full, if occasionally loud. She misses silence. And wine that costs more than $17.
There’s the version who burned it all down and doesn’t regret it, except sometimes.
There’s the version who never stopped writing.
Or never had kids.
Or never figured it out but somehow didn’t mind.
And there’s the version you became, almost by accident.
She’s here. She’s reading this. She’s wondering what might’ve happened if she’d zigged instead of zagged.
This isn’t regret. It’s inventory.
You don’t want those lives. Not really.
You just want to try them on sometimes.
See how they fit.
Feel the weight of them.
Twirl once in front of the mirror before slipping back into the you that pays taxes and forgets to buy oat milk.
It’s not failure. It’s curiosity.
And honestly, it’s human.
Everyone has their ghost lives.
Some people are haunted. Some just wave politely.
Some throw them a bone every now and then just to keep the peace.
You don’t need to exorcise them.
You don’t need to mourn them.
But you can acknowledge them.
Try on the costume.
Wear it for a night.
And then, when the porch light goes out and the candy bowl is empty, you come back to yourself.
The real you. The one who made the choices. The one who lived this version.
Maybe not the boldest costume in the closet.
But yours. Still standing. Still interesting.
Still here.