Once upon a future time, I’ll live. With a fluttering of fairy tales, I’ll live a life through twenty-twenty vision where, perhaps, I’m that wisp of a thought that you glimpse out of the corner of your eye. I’m that beautiful princess, cast away in a castle, surrounded by trees as they strain to reach a never-ending blue sky. There are no clouds in this perfect world, and always the means to escape, to reach out and touch that gossamer thin dream.
Then life throws out the imperfect future at me. My castle hovers in the wings, waiting for me to reclaim it, but my eyes are fixed ahead, and I just don’t see all those possibilities. I could run down the steep stone stairs, meet my prince on his horse, or I could leap onto the tops of the trees and run across them, or I could let down my hair and allow the man of my dreams to enter my domain.
Instead, I marry the first man I sleep with, become that housewife who shoves dust around, cooks for the family, and just doesn’t bother to live. Until I meet my future self.
‘Hello,’ she says,’how nice to finally meet face to face.’
I stand and mumble as she spins around me, weaving the air with delicate thoughts.
‘Don’t you just love to live?’ she asks.
But I’m overcome with those thoughts. They pile up, gathering and threatening to smother me. I push them away and start to cry.
‘No tears please,’ she says, and her dreamboat eyes cloud over. ‘Your future is just over there, waiting for you. All you have to do is find it.’
My past saunters into view, and I take a step back and fall into my future. It is like falling into a rainbow, as colours flow and intensify around me. I can feel the heat of red and orange, my anger at my wasted past, followed by the yellow and green of all those knocks and bruises I survived, and then the cushioning of cool blue, soothing my pain away. And finally, the release of indigo and violet in smudges of hope and resilience. I lie back on my thoughts and laugh, and above me, if I just reach up, is a sky wide and open with possibilities. I close my eyes and let my future flood in, I have survived and despite everything my future self knows where I’m going.