Parallel Universes

A few weeks ago I started reading my first book for pleasure in months and months.  Struck By Genius by Jason Padgett.  Completely average guy gets beat up with resulting head injury, becomes quite possibly the greatest mathematician of our time.  Synesthete, coming up with all this stuff on quantum physics, the way the world works, how it's all organized in nature, etc etc.  Within all this, there's one page where he talks about parallel universes.  A theory I've heard/learned/read about before during my 30's, otherwise known as The Decade of Trying to Figure It Out.  This theory in which all of us are living different lives on a different plane of existence based upon choices we make or things that happen - or DON'T happen.   So theoretically, somewhere out there Brad and I celebrated 23 years together this year rather than 12, after meeting in 1992.   Somewhere else I'm still with my first husband (and probably freaking miserable).   Etcetera.

And somewhere…we're living our lives with Anna.

An obvious plot you knew was coming.
It's nice to think about in a way, her life being lived, her becoming her.  
But honestly?  If that's happening?  I'm freaking jealous.  Jealous of me.  Jealous of everyone who comes into contact with her who will know her exponentially better than I.  The sound of her voice, how she likes to wear her hair...the backpack she chose for kindergarten.  

As I write anger surges forth, the wind of my mind whipping my heart into a frenzy and breath becoming choppy as I go again on this unwelcome ride of wondering.  It takes just seconds to fall down the rabbit hole into the complete unreality of this reality.  

If Anna's somewhere else, I want to go there.   I know this begs the question "What if you had to give up the life you have?" In other words, the child you have.  Everyone with children knows you can't pick amongst them, who you'd have live or die.  I can't say that I'd choose life with Anna in it, alive and well, knowing that C might never come to be.  I've had to live the unimaginable already and don't like to delve into what life would feel like without C.   I know her too intimately, she is too much a part of me now.  Still.  

There was an NBC show not long ago called "Awake".  In it the primary character lived in a world where his wife was alive but his son was dead, but when he fell asleep he woke up into the reverse scenario.  He'd just go back and forth between the two realities.  I resonated with that show.  I mean, resonated.  That's the fantasy!  The universe won't let you have these two precious and irreplaceable people together, but gives you the opportunity to have them both separately.  

I'd take that.