The doors are all locked and shut tight, the covers drawn, and lights
down. The music’s softly playing in the background, but no matter what
happens I can’t settle my mind on this particular night. Not that
there’s anything outstanding about it really, the same thing has
happened on countless other nights. To be honest, the same thing happens
every night. I’m never completely settled, the feeling is just
magnified because I don’t have those strong protective arms surrounding
me, or the calming sound of his breathing. I don’t have his warmth, or
his calming presence, and it kind of hurts. It brings the demons in a
little deeper knowing that he isn’t there to ward them away. At the same
time though, I know that I need this. I need this time to reflect
because night after night I’ve been thinking these exact same thoughts.
These exact same problems keep wreaking havoc on my mind and on my
concentration. They are consuming me as surely as they are completely
strange and unknown to me. I mean, I don’t know why I’m thinking the way
that I am lately. It’s weird. I’m resigned to that fact though, I know
that I’m eccentric, a little out of the ordinary tonight, and it’s okay,
because I’m here alone with my thoughts. The music has been silenced,
the dryer is filling the void. I can still hear it though, still hear
the sounds of the soft singing, if only in my head. It makes me wonder,
crazily if maybe I’m hearing it in another somewhere. That probably
doesn’t make sense to you, and that’s okay. I’ll explain, just give me
time to process what I’m feeling. I think somehow it’s profound, maybe
it explains more about me than I ever deemed worthy of figuring out.
Final Destination is my favorite movie of all time. Not because of the
hot actors sitting center stage in it, but because of a single scene. A
scene, that in it’s entirety didn’t change or warp the movie in any way,
it didn’t move the plot along, or explain anything that you couldn’t
have otherwise figured out. It was just there, waiting to pull me in. I
can hear the words in my head of that scene. I think somewhere deep down
I know it by heart. Devon Sawa’s character looks at clear and asks her
if she thinks that somewhere out there their flight was still flying to
Europe, if maybe in some alternate timeline they had made it safely
there. He wonders that if this tragedy took place in his time, if maybe
somewhere else happier it didn’t. She in return says sure I wish there
was that place, a place where her father hadn’t needed cigarettes and
had stayed home the night that he left and got killed, a place where her
mother didn’t run off and leave her to deal with the aftermath. But
they don’t have that place, all they have is the here and now. That
scene captured me because that’s the question I had been trying to ask
myself since I lost my father. I wanted there to be this place where he
didn’t get sick, and he didn’t die and we were all happily living
together as one fucked up family. I want that place more than I’ve let
myself admit. More than I will ever let anyone know. Anyway I started
reading this book called From the Corner of His Eye, and in this book
every single person was interconnected and woven together to generate
this ultimate goal, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m
trying to say here. What I want to explain is that in this book there
are hundreds of thousands of planes of existence. Every single choice in
one’s life branches off. There is a place where my father chose to stay
with my mother, but he still got sick and died. There’s a place where
he never got a sick, and a place where it was worse. There’s a thousand
shades of gray in a thousand different characteristics in each world,
but each in turn has it’s tragedies. They are separate, removed, do not
effect one another, but they all have their traumas, and their
terrifics. The problem with entertaining these ideas, is how much I want
to be in another reality, one that parallels my own, but not to the
point where I can recognize it. There’s so many variables that you can’t
really pinpoint what you want to change you know? What if I had kissed
TJ on that grand day that I can’t seem to forget when I ended up at his
house in tears and in his bed with him caressing me? Would we have ended
up together, or would I be more broken than I am now? What if I hadn’t
betrayed Jessi’s trust? Would she still have moved to California? Would I
still have David? That’s the ultimate question. If my father was in my
life, if TJ was there solely as a friend, if I had never ever gone to
the lengths to betray Jessi that I did, would I still have ended up with
the love of my life as closely woven into my heart? Maybe in some
somewhere. I dunno if it makes it better or worse if it’s possible, but
will never amount to happening. Is it comforting to know that that place
is there? Would it be better to know that my father could walk me down
the aisle at my and David’s wedding in another place, but he can’t here?
Maybe I’d miss it more. Maybe I’d be dead today, I don’t really know.
Freak car crash with my father at the wheel, possibly. Maybe I never
would have gotten close to TJ at all, and he would have killed himself
when he had the chance months ago. Every event in my life succumbs to
the moment that I lost my father. If I hadn’t lost him I wouldn’t have
gained the friends, and love that I have in my life now, but it isn’t a
welcomed loss. I will never step back and see it for the greater good
that was intended. He didn’t need to be taken. He was the most kind,
generous, misunderstood, but still loving man that I ever knew, and he
deserved better. He deserved a full life. Maybe he got that. Maybe in
the years he had he gained everything that I think isn’t possible in 36
years. But then again maybe he didn’t. I hate the fact that I’ll never
know. Unless there’s that somewhere, where all wrongs have been righted
and I’m as happy as I can possibly be. I only wish someday to glimpse
myself in that kind of glory.
Broken, bleeding into the existence of the what-ifs of my dreams,
Jenny
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