The time to change
Do you know what its like to suddenly never exist?
A faint light comes over you and it’s like a cloth being eaten away by moths… Its painless, almost relieving; something just washing up inside you making you sleepy just carrying you down a frost bitten river. I tried so many times to save him, and I couldn’t… No matter how many times I sought out to change time, something else was always taken away from me. Some one close replacing the pain that I hoped to erase… But maybe that’s the price for happiness, for my selfishness.
The idea was could I live with knowing that I had changed it, that some one had died because I wanted to change it? And I couldn’t. I tried to change everything, save some one, rewrite so many things, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve tried.
It’s sickening to think, but he was right, I can’t play God.
If I save Madison, my daughter, my brother, Dean, Olivia, my friends… One of their lives is sacrificed and there is no saving them with out sacrificing another life. At this point in my life there is no way I can truly be happy.
So I thought, what if I never existed.
Obviously it was a rejected thought, the idea of a human being simply ceasing to exist-its like drowning, you want the gulp of air you know you’ll never get, and you don’t want to die. Well every human being wants to live, wants to exist in a world and do something meaningful.
But the more I thought about it after my failed attempts, I began to think of how meaningful it would be to not exist. Madison wouldn’t die… No one would be sacrificed.
Course that was a guessing theory, but maybe I was the reason every one died… Maybe it wasn’t their fate, but my presence of existing, causing this whim to always strike down against some one.
So instead of erasing one thing and changing it, I would erase myself and change everything. So I spent one last day, somewhere in time with everyone who I loved in my life… It was like keeping a secret, I was going away forever, and no one would know-no one would remember this moment, it was just for myself.
I lay there, and I watched him sleep, his deep breathing caressing over my naked flesh, a smile of some far off dream hanging on his lips. I realized how happy he was, and tried to picture him being happier without me. I removed myself from the bed, and he awoke asked me where I was going, that tired edge on his voice.
I don’t know what provoked me, but the secret came out. Maybe I thought he was too tired to comprehend it, but I looked at him and said simply:
“I think I have a plan to finally make you happy… I’m going to erase myself from time and simply stop existing.”
He stared for a long moment, probably trying to pinpoint some sort of stress, something that would make me say that. And finally smiled as if I were being childish, and over dramatic. A small lazy smile, but something so soft and tender. He reached out his hand and brushed my arm before rolling on his side and pressing against me, wrapping his arms around me as if to stop me.
“That’s silly,” he whispered softly, “I wouldn’t be happy without you.”
Those tears choke me now, thinking about it. But I couldn’t cry then, I wouldn’t let myself. I suddenly felt cold and dead. I couldn’t allow myself to be swayed by his words no matter how much my heart throbbed inside my chest. All I could tell myself was that, he didn’t know the life a head like I did-he didn’t know the misery that would be set, didn’t know the failed attempts…
This was for him. To save him, because I loved him.
So I stand here at the train station, a moment in time when my grandfather was taking me to plane museum. There was that joy written all over my face. I waited for my grandfather to ask me if I wanted an ice cream- always spoiling me…. And when he left I watched myself stand there waiting eagerly by the tracks. And that’s when I walked forward and pushed my younger self onto the tracks and didn’t look back as the train came.
Maybe there was a flicker of pain for a moment but then as I said before that light had come over me, that sensation of suddenly fading away happened. But I realized I wasn’t ceasing to exist, as I looked over I saw another me… He was on the train tracks scooping myself up, and I realized-some how he knew what I was doing, he had come to stop me… Time was rewriting itself, and I couldn’t exist with another Izzy around… But how this happened was unfathomable for me to conceive-and I couldn’t understand why…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I saved myself, because I knew the answer wasn’t to erase myself. I hadn’t realized it before but when I messed with time- it had split itself. It was like I was looking into the mirror of another me… I went to bed and would have dreams of this other life, and it occurred to me that letting myself exist was not the answer.
No I can’t not change time, I cannot save lives, and no… I may not have the happiness that I had strived for. But to erase the happiness that had been written and shared, it was too selfish to take away. Maybe there is away to change things and I just haven’t thought of it, but my heart can’t take it any more, I’ll dream about the other time me’s toiling away and trying to change it-maybe they will.
For now, I’m going back, and I’m going to let the time play the way it had originally. The hardest part was watching myself be so naïve of what was about to happen, and knowing he was going to die. Knowing what would come, and bearing with it.
But that was one strong aspect of humans-which most humans were capable of. And that was… moving on. And that’s what I realized; moving on is the only way out of this pain.
I froze time just moments before it would happen and I walked around the workshop, I studied the faces before I finally walked in front of myself. Looking over that younger face and trying to convey the emotions, the thoughts and other little things I wanted to say to myself. I felt that I would make it through; I knew I had to strength to move on-even if Madison was gone, other people were still in my life, and I wouldn’t exclude them for the sake being stuck in the past.
And then I climbed those steps to balcony, I stood in front of Madison, and I smiled. Tears poured out of my eyes, because this was the last moment-I may not have seen it, but this was the last moment Madison was alive…. I reached out my hand and I touched his cheek, the smile was harder to bear but I swallowed. I leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth one last time and telling him even if he couldn’t hear me-- because I didn’t have that chance to say it one last time, that I loved him.
I thought the hardest moment would be to bear through it, but it was really pulling away from him. Because I felt so stubborn, so ignorant and selfish again-to suddenly stop it all and try again. But I didn’t, I may have remained against him for a few minutes but I pulled away, I walked back down those steps, and I carried that weight of pain…
I unfroze time, I heard the crash, the cries, the desperations, and felt myself die all over again. But the idea was that, even in this sadness I wouldn’t ever forget him, and he wouldn’t ever forget me. And maybe some day, when I could move on, if there was ever anyway of meeting him again-then that was my new hope.
And that was my last thought as I walked through the fabrics of time, looking back at all those moments in our lives together and finally returning to my own time, I took that hope with me.