Чтение и письмо: история выбора (wish, if only)

The job I didn't take
Ten years ago this month, I turned down a job in Singapore. I was 27, working for a small publisher in Manchester, and a former colleague offered me a post on a magazine there: better money, a flat, a city I had never seen. I said no, and for a long time I told people it was because of my father's health. That was partly true. The rest of the truth is that I was frightened.
I have been reflecting on that year because my daughter turned five last week, and she would not exist if I had gone. This is the strange arithmetic of choices: you cannot regret a road without also regretting everything that grew beside the one you took. If I had accepted the job, I would be living in Asia now, probably fluent in Mandarin, probably childless, certainly someone else. I cannot wish that person into existence without wishing my daughter out of it, so I don't.
And yet. If I were braver by nature, I would have gone — and I sometimes wish I were. What I do regret, cleanly and without complication, is the reason. I wish I had said «I'm scared» instead of hiding behind my father. If only I had been honest, I might have found a middle way: six months, a trial, a return ticket. Nobody offered me that, because I never asked.
In retrospect, staying was the right call, but for the wrong reason. The decision defined the next decade; the reason defined the next five years of small, safe choices, until I finally noticed the pattern. These days, when I am at a crossroads, I ask myself one question: am I choosing this, or am I avoiding that? The answer is usually obvious. Singapore is still there. So, for all I know, is the flat.