Collapse

I read somewhere that we’re all a decision away from an entirely different life. Only, we don’t know it, not always, not often, because we either fail to make a choice or, when we do, we never see the alternative outcomes – not without tinted glasses, that is. And it begs the question: do we ever actually live? This life, I mean, not the inebriating nostalgia of what ifs.

Tracing paper spread across the table, bare nails, 2B lead.

“This,” said Nora, “is a collapse.” She tapped a circle on the page from which two thick lines branched out, one long and consistent, the other snapped.

“It’s a junction – think of it as a node on a tree. This,” she continued, fingering the dead-end, “was another potential reality you could have lived.”

“If it weren’t for the collapse,” said Melissa, pointing at the lead circle.

“If it weren’t for the collapse into this single state,” clarified Nora. “Here you collapsed the wavefunction, the superposition so to speak, and this—” A lone branch emerging, shooting upward— “became your life.”

Melissa stared through the circle, that 2B silver ring on the page. That was her leaving John – her leaving John the week after he invited his colleague over for dinner. Janine. The way she’d dangled him in front of her… the way he’d relished it, dismissing Melissa as jealous and insecure and delusional when she called it out in private. Years later, and she still shook her head at the recollection. Sighed with relief (or regret, who knows?) at the thought of him fuse-blown yelling at her all those years ago.

“And what did that trajectory look like?” she asked, eyeing the snapped branch.

From the roll, Nora tore more tracing paper and with it overlaid the lead illustration and its winding roots.

“Blue,” she said, scribbling away. “We’ll do this one—the life you didn’t lead—in blue.”

Scratches against paper, the whoosh of a long, blue branch extending from the grey node beneath it.

“This was the parallel trajectory,” said Nora, tracing the blue veins with the butt of her pen. Circled a node, as big as a blueberry, in black fineliner. “You’d have collapsed another major wavefunction here – another life-changing decision.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know; it never happened. Even the possibility of it ended with the collapse,” she said, tapping the original grey dot, swollen and final like a picture-book full stop.

But Melissa could guess, kind of, her gaze climbing the blue branch: the what if she never lived. Branch blue as denim, blue as sky, blue as her left eye in that alternate spacetime.

“I’m not proud of it,” said John, “but we were both wrong.”

Melissa nursed her bruises, eyelid bulbous like a bluebottle jellyfish.

“I wouldn’t have done it, but I had to set boundaries.”

His hands found her waist as she leant over the vanity, cold compress against her eye. She straightened up and studied his reflection. Bearded chin on her head. Shoulders, broader than hers, enclosing her within his silhouette.

“You could have really hurt me,” she said.

“I’m not proud of it,” John repeated, nuzzling her neck. And this small acknowledgement, this small acknowledgement with no buts, was enough for now – it was something. Melissa turned to face him, to search those gentle brown eyes, and there she found who she was looking for – John, it was John. She collapsed into him, almost into a single being.

“Hey,” whispered John, as they sunk to the bathroom tiles, this tangled four-legged and four-armed thing.

“It’s OK,” he said, cupping the nape of her neck, rocking her as she sobbed into his chest.

“You’re abusing me.” Muffled. He could feel her tears through his T-shirt.

And they remained like that, entangled on the bathroom floor, the ratty blue shower mat, silent save for his soothing and her voiceless cries. Caught in her throat. Somewhere in her windpipe. Somewhere in her lungs.

Somewhere in an elsewhere that never happened but would have had she not nipped it in the bud. And her actual life – there it was, faded beneath the thin, onion skin paper.

“Take the blue away,” said Melissa, clearing her throat.

Nora promptly obeyed, rolling it up like a newspaper telescope, rubber band snapping it shut.

“We can address it in our next session,” she said, “or whenever you’re ready.”

Melissa nodded.

“Or you can tell me the nature of this collapse.” The original grey ring.

“That’s when I left John.”

“And the turbulation here?” Quivering branch right before the node.

“That’s when I met Janine.”

“She was a catalyst.”

“She was a bitch.”

“Maybe she saved you all this,” said Nora, waving like a wand the roll of trace, the black and blue what if.

“Maybe,” managed Melissa, voice still trapped in her throat like phlegm. “Shall we call it a day?” Ten minutes left on the clock.

“Sure,” said Nora, rolling up the first sheet of trace, 2B branches, the life to be led.

“This,” she said, “is all you need to worry about for now. This—” she smacked it against her palm— “is the only reality that exists.”

“But it almost didn’t.”

Nora pursed her lips and sighed. Rose from her chair, curt nod.

Melissa nodded in return, gathered up her purse and cardigan, made for the door.

“Melissa.”

She swung around.

“Beware the almosts.”

Then, a polite smile. Two. Door clicked shut. Music in the waiting room.

Melissa crossed the parking lot, its car horns and grinding trolley wheels. Sun bright, crosswalk white stripes flashing like a strobe light. She knocked on a tinted window, climbed into the familiar grey Benz. Lips kissed. Nose nuzzled. Cheek caressed. Relief so heavy she could collapse.

“How was today’s session?”

And she did, she collapsed in heaving sobs – but this time into safe arms, his sweater grey, a decision away from an entirely different life. And in that entirely different life, she now realised she’d have dreamt of this one.