Dear Plan B,I'm sorry I called you "backup"for so many years, like you werethe understated friend I'd only callwhen the prom queen canceled.Plan A had the better marketing—the vision board, the five-year spreadsheet,the TED talk about manifesting destiny.Failure is not an option, they said,while you waited in the wings,patient as a hospital chapel.
Plan A was medical school at twenty-five.You were nursing at thirty-fiveafter the marriage imploded,after the money ran out,after I learned that some failuresare just life telling the truthabout what was always impossible.
Dear Plan B, you were never second best—you were the plan that knew me better.The one that accounted for being human,for car accidents and sick mothers,for depression that stole two years,for the economy that ate my industry,for falling in love with the wrong personso beautifully it remapped my priorities.
Failure is not an option—it's a requirement.It's the price of admission to any lifeworth documenting. Plan A assumeswe're machines with perfect programming.But you, Plan B, you know we're jazz—all improvisation and bent notes,making music from whatever's leftafter the sheet music catches fire.
They say shoot for the moon—if you miss, you'll land among stars.They don't mention the cold mathematics:stars are lightyears apart,and the space between themis called "the rest of your life."But you never promised the moon.You promised Tuesday. You promisedwork that pays the bills and leavesenough of me to love my daughter.You promised smaller dreamsthat fit in actual hands.
Dear Plan B, some nights I still dreamof Plan A's ghost—the surgeon I never became,the novel I never finished, the personI was supposed to be by now.But then I see what you've built:this quieter life that fits,this work that matters to someone,these small victories nobody posts about.
You were never failure.You were wisdom dressed in work clothes,showing up after the motivational speakers left,teaching me that most success storiesare just Plan B wearing confident lipstick.
Love,The person who finally gets it