Another possible life-changing event, that never happened
Early 1990's.
While I was doing my military service in a nearby town, I met J when out drinking with my buddies, as we passed a crowd and a group of girls among them called us out, "hey boys, come party with us!". We joined them and sat and talked for a while, I talked to 3 of the girls while sitting on a small knoll in a park next to the street. When it was time to move on, one of the girls I had talked most with, followed me and took my hand, walked with me.
J was tall and slender, brown hair and blue eyes, were very much talkative and had her own opinion about things .. I liked her and she was very attractive.
It got late and I had to leave to go back to barracks, we kissed and exchanged phone numbers, this was before mobile phones so I got her moms number and she got my shared corridor phone number to barracks.
We kept contact and since I was doing military service, I was restricted to a few nights a week when I could leave the grounds and walk into town. She lived at her moms place a kilometer from the regiment gate, J and her 4 siblings, it was a fun crowd and they accepted me on the spot. J and I hung out there as often as we could, became friends with the mom also. Her mom was 40-something and looked a bit weathered, had bared 5 kids with 3 different men. She joked and said that it only took her to "see mens underwear on a clothes line" to become pregnant, so that I should keep safe distance from her.
For some reason we got apart and didn't hang out for a while and the phone calls became less and less. One day J stood in the postal office I managed and were posted at, a separate military department inside the regiment. J started working there, just across the corridor, as office help and managed teacher and pupils (soldiers in training) and we started hanging out again.
At one occasion I got reprimanded for late arrival through the gate of the regiment as I overslept when we had been out drinking and sleeping at J's.
There was an office lady there who got jealous that J and I hung out, got on smoke breaks and interacted, she was just a few years older and it felt like she wanted to trade places with J, but I ignored her and she wasn't my type and I wasn't interested.
J and I continued to hang out, she got her own place just a few hundred meters from her moms place, I slept at her place from time to time.
We went out to have dinner at a close by restaurant on a date-like sort of thing and happened to stumble upon a few of my friends, a few guys from another regiment that had temporarily transferred to complete some training, we all moved on to a pub and had beers, lots of beers, J's friend M also showed up, M were very interested in one of the guys, G. We, the guys walked back to the regiment while the girls walked to J's place.
M and G started to hang out, while J and I kept on with what we were doing, at some occasion M was going to meet up with G and for some reason J decided to join M, J met F ... J called me after a few days of silence to tell me that "we're over, done".
I cried, sobbed.
It was hard to work next to J without showing it, sadness.
A week later J was gone, she moved to wherever F lived. Then silence. Two months passed. J called me, she had been pregnant but lost the baby, when talking to the doctor, she learned that she lost the baby at a few weeks into the second trimester .. and it couldn't possibly be F's .. that it must have been mine as it didn't match the time she had met F.
Her miscarriage had been traumatic and chaotic, she had woken up in the middle of the night in a pool of blood, got into hospital with an ambulance and into a delivery room.
A few months later I had completed my military service.
..
Later on, I heard from J that she got pregnant with another guy than F, had a daughter, moved across the country and met a new guy and had two more kids. Her mom had died at age of 47, from liver failure.
If J's pregnancy, where I was the assumed father would have gone to term, my life would have been very much different today, I can't even imagine what it would have been like .. entire universes apart from my current life.
I check in on J from time to time, no affectionate feelings but rather as a friend. She hurt me but I have forgiven her.