Member-only story
Déjà Vu
a small thought about a big thing
What if our entire lives were just one big dream we are having as a baby, and that’s why déjà vu happens?
And then, when we are old and withered, and shitting ourselves in a bed because our health has gone to hell even though we are supposed to be living endlessly because of modern medicine, we die. Which really, is waking up.
And there we are, as little babies, second by minute by hour doing exactly what we just lived through.
Maybe that’s why we cry when we’re born, because of how fucking awful that would be: To have already lived and now, consciously but without any say in the matter, have to do it all over again.
Terrifying.
We see everything, we live everything. Then do it again. A perpetual dream within a dream within a dream…eternally.
We might try and change it, because we know where we went wrong, but, like with any dream, we forget specific parts over time — what this character looked like or where this event occurred or why this person broke our hearts or why we broke theirs first…We forget it. By the time we are five and we can remember new things, which is to say old things, our memory of our not-so-past-life has faded away into a thin film of recollection.
And in the end, when the events happen again, and you recognize them ever so slightly, it just tickles a little bit. You feel a bit odd.
Maybe that’s déjà vu. It’s your soul reconciling with the cruel, tragic joke that you can’t fix the problems in your life even though you know exactly how to.
I hate déjà vu.
