I feel like you’re calling for me almost every night. I am not manufacturing these feelings, it just doesn’t add up. Your pull is so strong and when we do meet I really do feel like it’s meant to be. How could something that feels so right be wrong. But then I eat you with a little chocolate syrup and an hour later I am paying the price. I tell myself never again, but we both know I’ll be back in the freezer tomorrow night after dinner looking for my soul mate and it will feel so right, like destiny, until it goes very wrong.
The really strange part about parallel selves is the fact they just spell your name backwards. I mean, sure it’s a parallel universe and all, with an exact but not exact version of me but I just can’t get over this oddity. And are the mean ladies in this parallel universe all called Nerak?? Of course you have Bob, he’s the same in both. Are there redneck hipsters who inadvertently solved the issue by naming their kid Racecar? Just so many questions….
Oh yeah, we are all in danger, FYI.
Sure, automation in machines makes sense. Start it along its predetermined path with a quarter or hitting the start or enter button and it fulfills its duties again and again until it doesn’t. But here we are now, with a small dot of an apparatus attached just behind the ear, completely camouflaged with a skin tone matching technology, providing a direct line to our thoughts. The tricky part - how does it discern between a thought requiring no action and another thought needing action of some sort. Well, it turn out thoughts have a different flavor of sorts, found by a young graduate student at the University of Kansas. The dot directs thought traffic to an astonishingly accurate level.
Dear Fred: today was a tough day full of unfortunate turns and sinister outcomes. For example, they were out of strawberry milk at lunch. I also missed out on a game of freeze tag and the swing sets were full. I am not sure why the heavens have cursed me so. Alas, tomorrow is another day and I will endure.
Dear Simon: what a day! I emptied my email box within two hours of sitting at my desk, the relief is enormous and now it’s back to a bevy of others with my follow up and/or instructions. Knowing good and well this cycle never really ends, but oh man does that empty inbox feel good for now.
Dear Ethel: Really, what happened to all of these people? They were all naturally beautiful and now they look so smooth but not in a natural way. I do wonder, sincerely, if the new smooth looks better in their mind’s eye than just accepting natural aging. Admittedly, this is a hard one for me to reconcile. I always want people to do what they feel when it comes to their bodies, I just don’t get the trade in.
Inevitable as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, 5th edition - incapable of being avoided or evaded. It is a feeling like no other, isn’t it? The fact that it’s going to happen just puts a different spin on the other emotions in the room - anxiety, nervousness, anticipation, to name a few. Just like the clock will hit noon, so will this thing that has to be done.
I can see her sitting in the family room from two miles away, scrolling through IG and then finishing up Wordle for the day and sending to her text group labeled ‘Breakfast Club.’ I make my way over, covering the two miles in a matter of seconds, float through the open window as she looks up, a look her in eyes of familiarity mixed with bewilderment. Step one in a marathon of explaining my other self.
You were the dream, the idea of something new, an adventure for all of us. Coming from a place of comfort and familiarity, it was always going to feel like a leap of faith.
She was the one who knew, and who has a confirmed knack for knowing these kinds of things. It would be better, eventually, for all of us. It was with varying levels of satisfaction but the constant in all of this was this fantastic city and reverberation vibe.
Alas, the tune has changed and the next adventure awaits. Austin, you beauty, thank you.
To be clear, this isn’t a sad story by any stretch - he was a bad decision from the get go. The likelihood of a meaningful relationship with a bouncer at a country western bar in middle america was about as high as riding the mechanical bull in said bar for 8 seconds (shout out to Luke Perry). But how could one be blamed, he was charming, tan, built like a linebacker and had his lines down, no doubt from countless reps. It shouldn’t have gone past the line to get in (yes, a line to get in - it’s the Midwest and the mechanical bull is always a big draw).
I could walk to work over 20 miles each way with little to no sidewalks along major highways, or I could drive.
I could plant a garden, trying to grow enough food for me and my family of five, or I could go to the grocery store.
I could write a letter with urgent information provided or needed, or I could make a call or send - email, text, slack, teams, WhatsApp, messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok (I’d do an interpretive dance with this option).
I could tough it out with any of a multitude of infections (strep, ear infection, flu), or I could take antibiotics.
I
It starts at the back of the house with the mere glance of a certain outfit. The instant energy is one and any kind of motion backwards is met with a look of disappointment, the kind that makes you feel especially bad because it is pure. A few steps in the right direction and the levels of excitement build every few feet covered. Is it really going to happen, this special, special time (note: it happens almost every day). We all move closer to the breach and now a modicum of discipline must be observed, lest we are beasts with no manners. Finally (finally!) we come to the moment. And it goes something like this:
And we are off for our daily walk around the neighborhood once again.
It’s just another day, like the others but it’s not and I’m not sure I can do it. Days like Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays - they are all just days but we anoint them with different meanings because it’s the 25th, the fourth Thursday of November, the day we planted our flag on planet Earth. How special, or not, those days feel come from within us.
How then do I know what to do with this day and how it will make me feel? I want to celebrate a life but it becomes so very hard because along with those great memories comes a keen sense of loss and sadness. I simultaneously want to remember with all I can while also not spiraling into a bad place, one hard to get out of if dug too deep.
So, here is what I have decided. I will focus on how deeply I am shaped by her, good, bad or somewhere in between (where really most of exist).
