every version of us

draft 3

“I don’t want to be here,” I repeat. As if he cares. “There has to be something I can do to move on, like solve a puzzle or answer a riddle or ask the right question.” Were I speaking to any other man, I would be embarrassed by the desperation in my voice, but here, fueled by two decades of frustration and heartache and ineffable emptiness, I don’t hesitate.

His right eyebrow raises. “What, like if you ask just the right question, you’ll be rewarded and everything will work out exactly how you wish?” He scoffs. “Has that ever worked for you before?” My eyes roll despite the embarrassment flooding my chest. He struck a nerve and, being omniscient, he knows it. He pushes further, “You realize this isn’t an escape room, right?” Heat rises beneath my skin as his lips come together in a pout.

I make a show of looking around at my lack of surroundings to regain my composure before glaring at him. “Obviously,” I drawl. “An escape room is a room.”

His head tilts to the side. “And this isn’t a room?”

As the question leaves his mouth, maple floors appear beneath us, followed by white walls, warm sunlight, and a couple thousand dollars worth of IKEA furniture. “Because I’m pretty sure–”

I let go of the breath I hadn’t known I was holding without pausing to consider why it was stuck in my lungs. “This is my living room in New York,” I finish for him. His expression softens as he nods. There’s a lengthy silence before, finally, “How long have I been dead for?”

His response rolls out immediately, “Who said you’re dead?” It’s neither a confirmation nor a refutation. I reach out to touch the dresser and my fingers make contact. I give it a light push, and they show resistance. “Is physical touch proof that you’re not?”

I ignore him and start exploring. Nothing has changed—it’s the same unmade bed, the same assortment of mismatched pots and pans drying on the stove, the same orange towel hung up on the back of the bathroom door. It’s still warm without being hot and there’s still dirt, dust, and hair scattered across the ground. It’s still clear that a young woman in her twenties lives here.

Except my body is missing.

And it feels different, somehow.

It doesn’t feel real in the way that I know reality to exist.

I come back to the living room, where he’s been watching me from, not that I was able to wander very far within the small confines of my East Village one-bedroom. I wait until we’re standing face-to-face, inches apart. I look up at him. “Why am I here?” I sound exhausted, even in this in-between place.

“Why do you want to kill yourself?” His tone isn’t gentle, but it’s not judgmental, either.

“Because I don’t want someone else to have to live with that guilt.” It’s a half-truth. 

Maybe less than half.

“Bullshit.”

It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Are you allowed to swear?”

He shrugs. “When it’s appropriate.” He doesn’t continue and I don’t offer anything. A beat later, he changes the question, “Why do you want to die?”

My eyes narrow defensively. “What, like if I give you a good enough answer, you’ll finally let me?” I almost laugh, and although I don’t, I do know that the sound would have come out cruel and calculating and far from humorous. “Shouldn’t you already know the answer? Isn’t that your whole job?”

“What if my job is to convince you to live?”

“What if I’m determined to die?”

It’s a stand-off, except the ground doesn’t feel even, and it’s at this moment that I realize his eyes are green and his hair is dark and he is only taller because so is He. Perhaps another unconscious bias.

He doesn’t speak.

My nerves grow increasingly tense, something indefinable building up in my body, and I’m forced to acknowledge that I want nothing more than for him to persuade me of something that nobody else has ever successfully convinced me of, because he is the only one who has a genuine chance.

But I need him to fight for it.

“You’re right, it’s not easy. You wouldn’t be here if it was.” I don’t move, expectancy humming in my head, though I know it remains shielded by the self-protective anger I have never fully learned to let go of. His eyes respond with gentleness; there is no armor which can protect from omniscience. “Do you know how lucky you are to have felt so much love for another person who also loved you that deeply in return?”

I howl.

His expression doesn’t change.

“That is the argument you’re going for here?” I don’t know if the tears building in my eyes come from pain or from rage or from the rib-crushing laughter that’s making me gasp for air, but I let them roll down my cheeks regardless. He says nothing, waiting for me to calm myself, and in my fury his patience feels arrogant. “You have to be fucking kidding me.” I wipe the tears away and smile unpleasantly. “Yeah, I do know how lucky I am, but you know what else I know? It was an honor to be loved by him and I destroyed that. I ruined that, all on my own, because that’s what I do, and how am I supposed to live with myself? I don’t even think I’m capable of love and how am I supposed to live with that?”

His gaze remains tender despite my resentment. “He’s forgiven you. Why can’t you forgive yourself?”

I take a step back to throw my hands up in the air between us. It doesn’t feel like enough. “Do you really think that makes things better?” I’m screaming and I don’t care. “It’s just a reminder that He’s good, despite everything He has been through, He’s still good, and I’m not, and no matter how much I love Him, I don’t deserve Him, and I sure as hell don’t deserve His love.” I pause to take a deep breath. He lets me. “This man looked me in the eyes and said ‘I don’t want to be in love with someone who could say that to me.’ How the fuck am I supposed to get over that? How the fuck am I supposed to forgive myself for that?”

We’re still in a stand-off, and our footing is still unequal and I’m still on the losing side of a war that can’t actually have a victor.

I watch his chest rise and fall. 

Once, twice.

Then, “You need to heal.”

My brain seizes in my head. His words weren’t what I was expecting. “Excuse me?” I mean to sound offended, but it comes out as a whisper rather than an accusation, all of the energy gone from my body.

“It wasn’t going to work from the beginning.” It’s a reminder that I don’t care for. He takes a step forward, reclaiming his authority. “There’s no universe in which you two are together right now, not the way you both are.” He waits until I’m looking directly at him before repeating, “You need to heal yourself first.”

I’m reaching up to dry the tears on my face before my brain even registers that more have started falling. I lean forward, “I want to see them,” I insist. I begin to grow manic. “I want to see my alternate universes. I want to see every version. I want to see proof that this never would have worked, even if I had been better.”

He’s shaking his head before I’ve even finished speaking. “Absolutely not.” His tone is firm, his language the most definitive it’s been this entire conversation. He begins to explain, “Each universe is fundamentally the same. You tell him you love him, he eventually says it back, he tells you he thinks he’s in love with you, you hold onto that and let yourself fall in love with him, and then for various reasons and at different points in time, he walks away, because he was always going to.”

“So then what was the point?” Another whisper.

“You needed to learn a lesson.” His voice is once again soft.

I hesitate, but my desperation wins. “Will he come back to me?”

He shrugs. “Why does that matter?” His tone doesn’t give anything away.

“Because there’s no way I just lost the love of my life over something I said while twenty-one and drunk and having my worst life experience to date.” My voice is low with both self-hatred and heartbreak.

He doesn’t respond, he just looks at me.

He doesn’t actually need to say any of it—everyone else already has.

So I shake my head and I scream.

I scream until my lungs have run out of air, and then I take another deep breath and I scream again, and I repeat the process, over and over, until my throat is raw and I’m coughing up blood and I can no longer hear anything softer than a shriek, my ears ringing from the sound of my own shrill notes, and it is not until I bother to look up after collapsing to my hands and knees that I notice he never covered his ears.

He never covered his ears because he is god and I am human and none of this is fucking real.

My head falls back down. “None of this is fucking real,” I repeat. I can feel my mouth moving, but I can’t feel my vocal cords, and when I hear the words they sound far away, as if the voice isn’t mine even though I know it is. I repeat, “None of this is fucking real.”

When I look up again, he’s smiling.

And then it’s blinding lights and more shouting, except I’m not the one speaking, and all I can think, as the lights are moved and I feel hands pressing against my skin and suddenly my mother’s face is looking down into mine, is thank god.

I still don’t believe in god, but I do believe in something, and for now that’s enough.