Dedicated to my wife, Christy
Submitted by Anonymous
Once, after having watched a movie on the subject, I wondered what it would be like if I were sent back in time to when I was a child, and had to live my live over again. I know it’s silly, but I actually spent some time thinking about this. I thought about the advantages, such as knowing in advance where to invest money, and then wondered what difficulties there might be. I’d never known anyone who died in a way that could have been prevented, and I know I couldn’t have prevented my parents’ divorce. For the most part, it seemed you could just arrange things so that your life followed a similar path, while avoiding your mistakes and doing things better this time.
And I was lazily daydreaming like this when a thought came to me that sent shivers down my spine… there would be no way to arrange the way I met my wife! You see, I had gotten a job in New York, and was assigned specific tasks that kept me travelling in certain circles, which just happened to be the same circles she travelled in. If I hadn’t been assigned THAT PARTICULAR assignment, which opened up the day I applied fo the job, we never would have been able to spend years getting to know each other slowly. If I had, let’s say, just shown up at her door one day, or started hanging around her neighborhood, she would have thought I was a stalker.
Even more distressing, all those years I’d be growing up I would know where she was, but I couldn’t very well show up 7 years old and ask to hold her hand. I imagined the pain of travelling to where she grew up and seeing her walk down the street with her friends. I’d be dying to run up to her, give her a big hug, and tell her how much I’ve missed her those past years. Yet I’m sure that at that age my actions would have resulted in alarm, and not love. Thus, I wouldn’t be able to hold her hand or share in those ‘extra years’ with her. I’d always know in the back of my mind that I probably only had one chance, and the only sure chance was years away. I mean, how many people do you who married someone that stalked them since their youth?
Some say that man does not fear death, only uncertainty. And that uncertainty of ‘what if i mess things up before they have a chance to start’ would keep me in pain, at a distance, for all those years. It would be like seeing you through a one-way mirror. To be so close, yet unable to touch. To see you, but unable to be seen by you. To love you, but to see no love in return. And that, I’m quite sure, I could not survive.
One thing’s for sure, I’d better stop watching those sci-fi movies, and sweep you off to Hawaii!