Miscellany

Parallels

Deep inside of a parallel universe
It’s getting harder and harder
To tell what came first

The only parallel universe I know is the one I carry with me everywhere I go that sometimes mimics, sometimes defies – or redefines – the exterior world. In me are things related to what others see, but not often the whole of it or never on display.

How did this parallel universe coming into being? Like everyone else’s – though not all talk about it – this parallel universe inside of me was self-created from a combination of things, some of them within that category called nature, some resulting from what we call nurture.

This parallel universe is my life as it is meant to be. When out of curiosity I put my maiden name on the Web (‘Jennifer Brice’) it came up with a website dedicated to an American woman of that name – professor of creative writing at an up-market college, writer of historical novels, slim, attractive, married with children. Only half-jokingly I sent her an e-mail that began, "Hey! I think you’ve stolen my life..."

She never replied, probably thinking I’m a credited nut or electronic stalker. But deep inside I know that she is living how I should have lived if I had been able to unglue myself from the demands, delights and dangers of this universe, this world of reality.

I remember a poem about a tree shaped by the wind:

Is it as plainly in our living shown
By every twist and turn
Which way the wind has blown?

We are shaped by what we became, and what we were - and what we might have been.

I have lost the chronology of my life and cannot any longer map out why it led to this alternative or parallel existence rather than where I wanted it to go. Obviously, I was blown off course. or my sense of direction betrayed me. I do get lost easily, and always joke my brother got the compass and I got the wit and charm.

The truth is I spent so long pleasing others and contributing to their perception of what reality should be that my own reality got lost. Yet it remains inside, the deep shame and grief of unfulfilled potential. Now and then it comes up for air and gets things done. But I’m over the hill now, and running out of time. Too little, too late. The parallel universe that was meant to be mine is still a vacant section with a wayward frame and no room livable.

Sad, eh?

posted by Jenny Argante @ 3:45 AM