alter-life

had a very odd dream this morning. didn’t think to write it down or record it, so am now left only with snippets and the general theme of it.

i dreamt i met someone in the parking lot of my apartment, as i was going to the truck to go to the grocery store. he said he was there to give me a choice/chance to return to a critical moment in my life with the insight and knowledge i held as a result of making the choices i’ve made.

in the dream, i took the chance, and returned to the time i was 18, and in the midst of the streets. i avoided several mistakes and returned to school, then went on to college. i remained single, and celibate. i completed my masters and undergrad work and obtained my PhD.

i joined a university as a tenured professor and spent the next 12 years absorbed in academia, writing papers and enjoying something of a casual combat of thought with my peers.

i met and married the man who does not exist. we shared everything. we decided against having children.

one evening, as i was standing on the balcony looking out over the city, a stranger next door looked over and said hello. we began talking, and they told me i was living the wrong life. angry and insulted, i pretended not to understand.

they insisted. they reminded me of the people i never met, the lives that i never touched, and the children i never had. and they asked me if this was really the life i wanted.

i was weeping. i wept because it was the life i wanted, but not if it meant all the things they were reminding me of… the stranger was smiling, and they were crying too… they opened their hand and in its center, there was a small diamond. it shone with an unnatural light. they tossed it over the distance and i caught it.

i held it up and looked at it closely….  in the facets there were images, so many images. they reflected off one another and into one another and they were all the same, even as they were all different. infinite choices branching into infinite paths with infinite outcomes, but all contained in this small, shining gem that winked and glinted as i held it in my fingers, held it up against the night sky.

the stranger was watching me, but said nothing. i knew without knowing how i knew what must be done. i looked for the image of the life i knew as mine. searched for it. found it near the center. set my thoughts to it, remembering the path taken, the choices made, and following it…

the gem fell from where it had been… my hand no longer there to hold it. it hit the slate of the balcony and shattered, even as the balcony and that entire world collapsed into nothingness… emptiness, void.

the nothingness resolved into electronic noise, which slowly resolved into the world i know, and i found myself standing by my truck, keys in limp hand, staring off at nothing. the sense of settling into that moment is what woke me up.

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