Causality Paradox

God it was hot. Hot like a stink hanging in the air so no one wants to leave the arctic blast inside. In southern Florida in the armpit of summer, life slows down out of necessity. There aren’t cool glasses of southern tea sipped on low wrap around porches by happy biddies gossiping in their rockers. Fitness freaks are safely contained, working out like hamsters on the wheel all the while watching the stoplights change through shiny sprinkler washed windows. The clouds had mocked me all day, sitting at my desk looking out the window, promising rain and then scuttling away. The sweet sticky odor of trash cooking in the dumpster hung low like a blanket in the neighborhood and I was thinking of my birthday.

Twenty-six had come and gone with no party, no dinner, not even the usual cards from insurance salesmen, car dealers and lawyers. I heard the snick-snick of the mailbox closing and the crunching of the mailman tromping up and down the drive. I waited for the sound of his motor to catch and cracked the front door just enough to check the box. Wilting like a failed soufflé, fumbling the box I turned to watch the skies open wide and pour down. I swear I can hear malicious laughing in the peals of thunder and the quickly darkening day only leaves me feeling wet, hot and sticky.

Still standing outside, I ripped into a soggy white envelope, the only thing in my box, to find a single sheet of college ruled notebook paper written in a familiar hand with that unique look of blue Bic pen. It said:

“A gift from me to you:

From your future to your past,

just say the word

to go back.”

Squinting at the blurred writing, I didn’t really know what to think. Turning the envelope over I see the under the now familiar yellow address forwarding sticker there are the edges of at least three or four older stickers. How old was this letter anyway?

Postmark: Englewood, 1996

Like a dam bursting in my mind like an explosion of liquid memories I realize that I wrote this letter, a letter to myself. How old was I then? 15? 16? I must have been pretty silly to write tripe like that, but still, it made me think. What would it be like to go back? What would I change if I could change anything, everything even. And then, philosophically, if I changed anything in the past wouldn't that change the future by definition? It may be a causality paradox, but what was to save from this worthless life anyway, I thought.

That night I dreamed a vivid dream. Slumped at my desk, I was looking down at now smudged words on crisp white paper. Somehow I saw myself as I looked up, my eyes and my mind at last returning from some far off place. We'd pushed four desks together into a little pod as Mrs. B liked to call them. Chris on my left, his towheaded blonde hair falling into his eyes as it always did. Alicia on my right looking perfectly put together with her red and white keds matching a little red headband carefully controlling her long brown-blonde hair. The vision was only slightly marred by the fact that she was sitting on her curtain of hair, but that was pretty normal too. Her notebook with its pink fuzz and purple spangles was placed neatly in the exact center of her desk, her pen poised quivering as it waits for her thoughts. Becky was across, she was always just a little fat, she's better friends with Chris and Alicia than me, but that's OK, I didn't mind.

Then the world swims for a moment as I see double. The world of the present intrudes on the world of the past reminding me for a moment that I've already lived these days--10 years ago. I can't breathe, it's like being in a waking dream, just on the edge of a nightmare where you can't wake up. Sweat breaks out over my entire body, the fine blonde hairs on my arms stand straight, my bic pen drops with an audible thump in the quiet classroom. "Hey, you don't look so good, are you alright," Chris asks, looking up. I'm holding my chest, my throat, my eyes are peeled wide as I stare at the paper before me the words "to go back" seeming to float mockingly in the air like a mirage. I stumble out of my seat, slamming out the door and into the open halls of my old high school. I hear Mrs. B calling after me that I need a hall pass to go to the restroom and my ever staunch defender, Chris, telling her where to stick it, albeit quietly.

I'm lost, I'm in the present and in the past, operating on 10 year old memories of a place I've done my best to forget. No one wants to relive the agony of the teenaged years, so full of hope and desolation, opportunity and restriction. I went back. Apparently this trip doesn't come with current recall of your day-to-day life back then either. I'm hiding in the bathroom, I don't know what to do, how do you choose the unknown to the willing destruction of the parts known, sacrificing bits of your life you'd sworn never to forsake? How can I give up everything I've learned, people I've known, things that were worth any amount of pain I had to go through in order to grow up and be my own person, living my dreams?

But, I wonder, slumped down on the cold tile floor, locked in the girl's bathroom staring at those old standard toilets, white with black seats; did I ever live those dreams when I grew up and set out to "be" someone? If I'm honest with myself, I know I can't say I did, I mean just today I read a letter from my 16-year-old self. I dreamed of being a writer back then. I had such plans for being a famous novelist writing a shelf full of books. I wanted to be a hard-hitting journalist, pinning evil businessmen to the wall for their soulless atrociies. I wanted to grow into an artist, showing my work in trendy galleries where I'd fly into the city just long enough to open the show and then fly back to my quiet retreat in New Mexico. Such dreams! I imagined myself all dressed in black, sitting in the orchestra pit, playing first horn in some famous symphony. And, back then I knew I could do them all, I could do or achieve anything I set my mind to.

I'd be married, of course, with a couple of smart kids who took after me. We'd live in an old southern house with a three-season wrap around porch. We'd have dogs and cats and fish. We'd barbecue with friends in the long summer twilight and throw blow-out parties every holiday just for fun. Life wouldn't be perfect, but we'd be happy and desperately in love. That was my life, the life I chose and mapped out with such precision.

None of it happened, well maybe a few things happened, but what if--what if I could have it all? I could stay here and relive the past, choose something different, avoid all those lessons I learned the hard way and really get it right this time.

"Charlotte?" Alicia called, "Are you OK? Mrs. B sent me to check on you."

"I--I'm fine," I replied a bit shakily. "I'll be back in a minute-just a stomach ache."

"OK," she called, already walking back, "I'll let her know."

Yes, I am fine, I thought.

I'll just have to take my chances.