Eden

Twenty-Eight

So this is a little weird, but I'm interrupting myself here. I am because, a bit later on, I have another odd thought about all of this, but one which is probably easier just to say now.

I've been thinking a lot about who and what I am now, and about pictures in my head of myself, and an idealised me, and I keep thinking about all of that for the next few days, just thinking, at odd times and odd places, when I can.

I think about a lot of things, including how whoever put me here decided how I should look. Like the actual how. The way they decided. The machines or brain-scanners they used, and the way those things worked.

I think about that, and as I do, I remember something I heard once, that older people often feel younger inside than they are. As in, they look whatever age they are outside, but inside they feel younger. I remember a high-school teacher telling my class this, once. That we all think he's old, when we look at him, but that he doesn't actually feel so very much older than us, inside, and that sometimes, when he stops and thinks, or looks at himself in the mirror, he's a little surprised when he realizes just how old he is, and then he half-wonders where his life has gone.

I think he was warning us to make the most of the time we had, or something like that. Which obviously I didn't actually listen to.

I think he was, but that isn't the point.

The point is that people think of themselves as younger than they are. That's what I'm trying to say. People think of themselves as younger, and they imagine themselves as younger, too.

The picture they have inside their head, of themselves, is a younger self than they actually are.

I remember that stuck in my mind at the time, mostly because it seemed a little sad, that this teacher was upset because he felt like he'd let his life slip away. I remembered it, anyway. And didn't think about it much, but sometime over the next little while, I vaguely remember him saying that. And once I have, once I do, I start to think about it a lot.

I mean, off and on, and when I have time. But still, I think about it a lot.

Because here's the thing. If I'm me, a resurrected me, brought back to life as I imagine myself to be, then perhaps I'm only the age I am now because I think of myself as being that age.

Perhaps I was actually older when I died, but then made to be the age I am now, here, because that's the age I think of myself as being.

It's kind of a disturbing thought. So disturbing I don't tell anyone else, or ask anyone else, because I'm pretty sure it would freak most people out.

But I think about it. A lot. Possibly a little obsessively. Because it has a horrible sense of rightness about it. Or at least, a sense of being possible. Of truthy maybe-ness.

I mean, I don't know, and will probably never know for sure, but I can't help wondering whether it's true.

I wonder, because it seems like a part of remaking me as the age I think I am inside would be that I'd lose all the memories I have that would contradict that remaking, like the ones which wouldn't fit with me being that age. If that makes sense. So all the memories of me being older than I am now, memories I shouldn't have yet, those would all get disappeared when I was resurrected here.

They'd get disappeared, and because of that, I'd have no way to ever know it had happened.

I think about this sometimes though, even though I find it a little unsettling. I think, and then usually I decide I probably shouldn't. Because since there's no way to be sure, and it won't help anything, it seems best to stop before I completely scare myself.

And so then usually, I do stop.

Which is what I'll do now.

It's just a thought, and I'll never know for sure, but it's a horribly possible thought.

That's all. Interruption over.