Sarah Mlynowski - Me Vs. Me

“I’ll make some space.”

Instead of going to my apartment, I stop by the emergency room to see if there is something wrong with my head. Like a brain tumor. After a few hours, I finally get to see a doctor.

“Lately, I’ve been existing in two universes,” I tell him. “Is that a psychological condition?”

He rubs his chin, looks into my eyes with a flashlight and asks me if I’ve been under a lot of stress.

“A little,” I say.

“You look okay to me,” he says. “Try to get some sleep. Do you want antibiotics?”

“No thanks.” I decide not to tell him the whole story. It’s not like he’s going to believe me. If this is real and I’m not going bonkers, then someone else in the world must have gone through this, too. Someone who can tell me how to make it stop.

Back in my old apartment, I get comfy on the futon, laptop on my knees, and try to figure out what the hell has happened to me.

I Google multiple lives and get over forty-three million hits. There are mentions of reincarnation, cats and, inexplicably, real estate. But nothing about my weirdo predicament. I try alternative lives and get another thirty thousand hits. Most of these are scenarios of regret. About what could have/would have/should have been. Then I land on something called Many-Worlds Interpretation. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse, many-worlds is defined as: “…an interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes the existence of multiple universes, all of which are identical, but exist in possibly different states.” Different states? Does that mean parallel universes?

I keep reading and reading and my heart pounds louder with every click, with every article. “These different states are caused by a divergence that splits the universe into two.” I discover that there is a whole theory in quantum mechanics (whatever the hell that is) that believes that whenever there is a choice, or a possibility, reality splits into a new world. Therefore, there is a new independent world for every different possibility. Anything that could happen does happen. There are books and information about this theory all over the Internet. There are over twenty thousand hits on this on Google. People have done experiments on this theory. Real scientists.

Could this really have happened to me? Yes. Yeeessss. My life verged the morning after Cam proposed. I’m not crazy. I am not crazy! What happened to me has been written about! Wahoo! Perhaps there’s a support group?

I get slightly nervous when one of the sites says that communication between these distinct universes in not possible, because I am, in fact, communicating with myself.

I search for another hour without finding anything specific. Not that it would help. Even though there are thousands of pages about many worlds, they’re all theoretical. There aren’t any real-life examples. As though no one else has gone through anything like this.

No one except me.

I keep reading and searching and end up seeing a lot of phrases like wave function collapse and relative state, which make me wish I’d taken a science class in college. I spend the next three hours searching until my eyes are tired. I type in green light, headache and wish, but still, nothing.

I close my computer and lie back. What I’ve learned today is that while there are lots of theories about multiple lives, no one has ever written an account of it happening. But if so many people have thought about it, written about it, and theorized about it, isn’t it possible? You can’t rule something out just because it can’t be proven, can you? There are like a million religions and none of them can be proven!

If the many-worlds theory is true, then everyone exists in multiple universes. There are many versions of me around, right now. There are many versions of everyone around, right now. Whenever anyone has to make a choice, a new version of her or him pops up. There’s a me who never dated Cam in the first place. There’s a me who went away to UCLA. There’s a me whose parents never divorced.

That seems a bit insane. There can’t be an infinite number of mes. Can there?

As a kid, I remember asking my dad how many stars there were. Living in California, he thought I meant celebrities and asked me if I meant movie, TV or both. When I clarified that I meant stars in the sky, he laughed and said, “It’s infinite.”

“How can that be?” I asked him.

“They go on forever and ever.”

“But how?”

“That’s just the way it is,” he said, playing with my hair. “Space, time, stars—they all go on forever.”

If all those things are infinite, then why can’t versions of people be infinite, too? Why not choices? And if so, did I somehow stumble into the ability to exist in two of these worlds?

Or maybe I just stumbled into the ability to remain conscious in two of these worlds.

At four, I hear Lila’s key in the door. “Hi, guys,” she says.

“It’s just me!” I holler, closing the laptop. As nonjudgmental as she is, she’d still think I was nuts.

Lila goes through her cleansing/changing routine and then joins me in my room. “What happened to you? I thought your flight was this morning. Where have you been? What’s going on?” she asks, sitting on the side of my futon.

I wave my bejeweled hand. “Change of plan. I’m not going to New York.”

Her jaw drops. “No way. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.” Half-true.

“Wow.” Smiling, she leans over and hugs me. “Congrats!”

“Thanks.”

“But Gabby, what about the new job?”

I shrug. “A person can’t have everything.” Most people, anyway. Apparently, I am not most people.

She gives me a hopeful look. “Does that mean you’re not moving out?”

I shake my head. “No, you’re still getting your home office. I’m moving in with Cam.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Aw. You lucky girl.”

“You know what?” I say. “I might be.” I’d choose lucky over crazy, anyway.

On my way back to Cam’s, I’m strangely invigorated. My wish came true. It must have. It’s the only explanation. My body feels alive and tingly. I decide not to tell Cam about my self and my other self—it’s not like he’d believe it. Who would? I barely believe it myself.

I find him in the backyard, surrounded by sawdust and some sort of table with a mirror.

“What are you doing?”

“Building you a vanity table for the bedroom,” he says, while hammering. “So you can have somewhere to put your makeup and jewelry and stuff. I got you a lamp, too, because I’m not sure there’s going to be enough light…. Do you like it? I still have to build the bench.”

I am so touched, I almost cry.

While he finishes, we return to his parents’ for Sunday night dinner. Afterward, we go straight to bed and I seduce him immediately.

“That was fun,” he says afterward. “Three nights in a row. Life is good.”

“Yes, it was,” I say, laying my head on his chest. His heart rate is beginning to slow.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asks.

Tomorrow! I start work tomorrow. In New York. A fiancé in Arizona and a new job in New York. I really do get to have it all—except a job here. “Try to get my job back.”

“My mom mentioned that she wants to start planning the wedding….”

“Of course she does.”

“Have you given any thought to getting married in May?”

“Whatever you want, babe.” Since I’m only half getting married, why not meet Alice halfway?

His eyes light up like a slot machine. “Really? And what about the church?”

Halfway does not include churches. Then again, maybe it can. If I ever get married in New York, I can do it any way I want. And to someone else. It wouldn’t even be bigamy. Legally, that is. “Whatever makes you happy,” I tell him with a smile. But I’m still not converting.