no. 9: parallel universe

Okay, I need to say this somewhere, so it's going here.

I went to see Juno tonight with some friends. And instead of just seeing a movie, I saw another version of my life play out on the big screen. (yes, I kind-of spoil it, so don't read too deeply if you want to be surprised by the ending of the film)

The main character, Juno, could have easily been me if I'd made different choices in my life. It was so eerie. Eerie and heartrending. I laughed, and I cried. Oh, did I cry. There were tears streaming down my face, probably equivalent with the girl on the screen by the end of the movie. I don't know... it was so strange.

And the choices she made, good and bad, gave her what she wanted/needed in the end, even if there was a "bump" along the way. And I am incredibly jealous of her for that.

I didn't think it was humanly possible for something like this to happen, because, quite frankly, I'm okay with my life, and the past is, well, the past, right? But when you're shown a collection of other options, and choices you could have made but didn't presented to you, with their outcomes, it's an entirely different story. I felt like I was being shown what could've been, and I wanted it. I wanted it badly. I think everyone carries around particular philosophies about the past being unchangeable, and how having regrets doesn't really do anyone any good because you can't run back and 'fix' things. Well, this was a total presentation of all my regrets in one place, and where they could've led me... and I wanted it. Because, in the end, she had love. She had the love I've dreamed of many a long night, the love I never had the guts to even try to get.

I cried because it was a sad movie (at the end), and because I wanted what she had, and because she ached the same way I would have ached had I been in her situation - which because of this eerie connection was all that much more tangible a possibility. The movie was so eerily similar to what could've been that I was in shock for an hour and a half afterwards. Actually, I still am. The boy she wanted, the school colours, what the boy did... spitting image. Not to mention how much of myself I saw in her... my quirky ways and sarcasm, even her father... while not spitting image, a reasonable cinematic facsimile. Had we not moved, it would have been our house and our neighbourhood too.

It all comes down to choices. And the choices I made pushed me further from where Juno ended up, and towards other avenues. Not that these avenues are bad, but that where Juno went wasn't half-bad either.

I just... I don't know. I didn't want to be presented - on the cinematic version of a silver platter no less (it's a fantastic movie) - with option g of all the choices out there, after I'd chosen to take option w. You should never be presented with a path you know full well you could've taken long enough after you cannot take it any more that it becomes tantalising. I'm going to spend the next week kicking myself for the choices I made, and the choices I just let slide by me. I could've done things so much differently from what I did. But the past is unchangeable, no matter how much I currently wish it was the contrary. And while I could take up running around in those circles of thought, it won't get me anywhere, and like Narcissus, I will slowly fade away through the obsessive effort.

But, for the time being, I am absorbed. This is not going to go away easily. Juno was option g of my life. An option I was fully presented with but decided against taking. And while, yes, it's fantastic to have done all that I've done in the option of my life that I have taken, there are large chunks of that g option that I want.

Large chunks that I want, and I don't know how to get now that I am where I am.