Drafted Reflections

Sometimes I stand outside and look up to the sky and I wonder to myself, “Could there have been a different path for me in some parallel universe where perhaps things were not as they were here?”

Could I have grown up knowing my father instead of him winding up dead before I had even turned eleven? I remember the look upon my mothers face when she heard the news… we were on our way to Dairy Queen. I sat inside with my sisters and my grandfather and we had chocolate dipped ice cream cones, though they did not taste as they normally had before that day. I’ve never eaten one since, my childhood irreparably damaged.

Could I have finished high school? Perhaps, though I maintain I did what was best for me, and never quit wanting to learn. You do not need a formal education to be knowledgeable.

Should I have pursued lost soul mates? No, for those are for the other universes, and that is why they feel so near and dear to your heart, because it is there’s in another. I reside in this time, as this human that I am, and no other, and so I cannot nor will not accept nothing less but exactly what my universe has planned for me. I expect the best for myself. I trust it will take care of me.

And yet New Rome is burning as the citizens riot and disease sweeps the nation, and suddenly I wonder if my optimism is misplaced. Has the universe ever looked out for me? Did it help me through the troubling times in my life or was it the trouble itself? Is there anything I can do?

Yes.

I can stop looking to the sky and make green the grass that grows around me.