In some kind of
alternate reality, I
am not
stuck at a boring meeting with
boring clients waiting for the boring CEO to
finish his boring summary. In my (self-constructed) alternate reality, I have a delightful boy waiting outside for the me. In the parallel place I am doing something else altogether, something my present self can only guess at. Something my two selves may never overlap to share the knowledge of.
I used to sit fogging the window with deliberate breath, waiting for my ride. Which was always late. Which I was always ready for too early. Which always led back to me, breathing warm onto a cold winter pane, waiting.
After an eternity of silent readiness, I invariably slid into a positive conviction that I had actually already been picked up. That somewhere there was a wrinkle in my house and I had fallen backwards, or to the other side of a curtain, and in reality? In reality I was already in a car headed to school. In reality I was already settled into my desk.
This habit of extreme certainty has not quite left me. A conviction returns to me at times: while waiting for something; while struggling through a difficult conversation; when coming out of a movie theater at 1 a.m. It is the feeling that really I am beyond this hurdle, beyond this moment in time, and have simply forgotten.