Our Life, If You Stayed

Some lives are never lived. But they are loved completely. Many of us have done this without realizing it. We meet someone and slowly, without permission, we begin building. We imagine the mornings with them. The home we would share. The trips we would take. The fights we would have and survive. The children who would sleep between us. The growing old, the white hair, the tea in the garden, the same song sung again after decades. We build an entire life with someone inside our hearts, in perfect detail, brick by brick, without ever knowing that they are already on their way out. And then they leave. And we are left standing inside a life that was never lived, holding every piece of it, not knowing what to do with something so complete and so impossible at the same time. Our Life, If You Stayed is a book written for those people. For everyone who has ever loved someone so deeply that even the life they imagined with them felt more real than the life they were actually living. For everyone who planned a future with a person who did not stay. For everyone who still carries the weight of a life that existed only in their mind but felt like the truest thing they ever had. This story is one man's version of that life. The bike rides and the rooftop nights. The kitchen and the dancing. The daughter who never existed. The lawn that was never built. The song that still plays. But it is also your story. And hers. And his. And everyone who has ever whispered to themselves, in the quiet of a difficult night, what if you had stayed. You will find yourself in every page.