(A dare and a desire to reconnect brought me to Tumblr today, where most everything that I thought of used to reside — here’s one of them, written by almost-18 year old me)
You know how they say that when you look at the Milky Way from a hundred miles away, it’s highly similar to how your brain cells are mapped? Just millions – perhaps billions – of tiny white lights that contain everything that you know right this very moment? Everything you’ve wished for, dreamed of, cared about… all scattered in that galactic design?
Well, what if the similarity’s there because we’re living in someone’s brain right now? What if, inside our own brains, are people too?
Like, there’s someone like me… exactly like me, but who isn’t me, who lives in some other universe? In some other brain? We’re going to have the same face, the same awkward smile, the same weird stride where the left pace is always slightly bigger than the right, the same unruly hair, the same uneven pinkies. Everything about me and the other me and the other mes from other people’s brains – from other people’s universes – will be the same in one aspect or the other, but we’re never fully replicated.
Because who I am right now, at this very moment, is the only version of myself in this universe.
Everywhere else is me. But isn’t me. Is Joy. But isn’t Joy. Somewhere else, in another universe, I’d be the only child. In a separate brain system I’d be the girl with the strong immune system, the one who doesn’t get sick every other week. In yet another, probably in yours, but obviously not in the one I’m in right now, I’d be the girl who’s not afraid to fall in love.
Isn’t it crazy?
And, perhaps, to a lesser – almost fleeting – degree, isn’t it comforting?
I guess it gives me a certain kind of assurance that the person I am today – the one that’s scared to fall; or, perhaps, the one who viciously tries not to be scared but who backs out at the last minute after she steals a glimpse of the almost vertical drop that’s in front of her – is normal. That it’s perfectly fine to be that kind of person.
Sure, I may get hurt because someday I might want to fall in love; hell, I might probably even find getting hurt better than not knowing at all how it would feel like; but the chicken in me will prevail and I won’t even attempt to understand why everyone’s into it – into the whole loving thing, and so I’ll take comfort in sitting back and watching life unfold before me. And while there’s a small portion in the back of my mind that would wish every single day that I would become less of a coward and allow myself to be run by emotions; the larger part, the more dominant one, will speak up and remind me that where I am is who I ought to be.
Because in another jumble of stars, in another amassing of nerves, in another person’s brain… I’m the girl who’s bold enough.
Of perpetual finds 