Surrounded by Treasures: how totally unlike me this all is

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

how totally unlike me this all is

I am scaring myself.

I don't write, OK? I mean, I write HERE, but this is just goofball little anecdotes with the occasional serious post thrown in, and there are no rules, and the level of perseverance required is just perfect. "Finishing" isn't really an issue. But today I got an idea for a story. AGAIN. NaNoWriMo, the gift that keeps on giving, right? This story is about the parallel universe version of me, sort of. OK, OK, so really she's the complete OPPOSITE of me, but sometimes when my life is really cluttered and hectic and there are all these emotional demands being made of me and I have three people to answer to and they all want different things and I get that it-would-feel-really-fantastic-if-my-head-could-just-explode-right-now feeling, sometimes I calm myself with this vision:

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is another version of me. This is the universe where I went to college and studied something I loved, like, say, orchestral conducting, or the flute, or librarianship, because I didn't get together with my husband (bear with me, I didn't say this was a happy fantasy, just a calming vision) and because I worked harder in school and got better financial aid. After The Parallel Rachel graduated with an advanced degree, she moved to the city, maybe San Francisco, yes, San Francisco. She got a job she enjoyed and rented or bought a smallish apartment with hardwood floors and comfortable-but-sparse furniture. She got a cat and maybe some fish. And she lives alone, and nobody comes up to her and says, "I'm hungry" as if she's a genie who's just supposed to twitch her nose and make food appear, each person's favorite dish in each respective place. Nobody (including herself) leaves dirty clothes in the living room, and there're only two or three jackets in her hall closet and NONE on her floor, and she wears makeup every day, and is totally coordinated and socially adept to boot (those last two items are in absolutely NO way connected with any kind of reality, parallel universe or not, but this is MY calming vision, so lay off), and her apartment is never EVER messy, and she doesn't own a lot of stuff. She comes and goes as she pleases and can leave the light on as long as she wants to read in bed and she doesn't own a single children's movie no not one.

Now, this only works for a minute. Or less. Because really, this parallel Rachel, her life is Bleak. No morning cuddles, no compliments about her milkshakes, no marriage that is the epitome of a fabulous relationship, no love, none at all, except for the cat, and a cat's love is decidedly limited in comparison to what the real Rachel has. But for the briefest of times, it's, well, calming to imagine her going about her sparse, quiet, orderly day, somewhere imaginary. When I need it to be.

So as I was doing the dishes this afternoon, and actually thinking about a former high-school acquaintance who's going through a lot of painful stuff right now, and wondering if she's going to totally change her life around and move back to the small town which I'm sure she hates to live with her parents whom she disdains, and WHAM, all of a sudden Parallel-Universe Rachel popped into my head, and she was having to move back to her non-sparse, non-detached hometown to be with her noisy, loving, cluttery family for some unknown reason (reason is still unknown, by the way), and words just started FLYING INTO MY HEAD, I am not kidding, about what made this person enjoy her solitude so much and how she felt when it had to go away and how things changed for her. I could not get my hands dried off fast enough to get to the computer to start tapping out ideas. It was almost scary. And the only reason I'm writing about it here is that now that I've mentioned it to someone I'll actually feel like I have to do something with it and not just let it slide away. Maybe.

Posted by Rachel on March 23, 2005 11:42 AM in I dunno, I thought it was funny...