Markers

Chapter 2

I'd unpacked my bags and fallen asleep soon after. It was mid afternoon then so I'm not all too shocked I woke up at around two a.m.

My eyes were fixed on the ceiling, my mind wondering. Why was I here?

Why had I left my nice safe home in South Africa, abandoned my comfortable well paying job and  switched out my beautiful four bedroom house in the suburbs for a three bedroom apartment shared by two other people in an area that's just barely upper middle class?

Well, because I think I'm psychic. Not that I just recently thought this.

I was twelve roughly when I'd had a dream. A long, lucid one that showed me how my entire life would play out and eventually how I'd die.

I mean obviously even at twelve years old I dismissed the notion. To be quite honest, besides my own death I couldn't remember much. Why on earth would I take this seriously?  Dispite this though, the dream haunted me. Followed me in the back of my mind.

And since then, there would be specific events in my life that would play out and remind me of some segment in that dream. The days and weeks that had moved in the blink of an eye that night

Would slowly replay themselves in a vision no one else could see. I'd feel like I lived out weeks of my life when really I had been watching it for minutes.

I named these specific events markers. The visions were never wrong. Down to the very last drop of water on a rainy day. Needless to say, I found life a bit... predictable. Amongst other adjectives.

I've tried to avoid these markers because what else can I do... play out a script? Wait to die? I shuddered at the thought. My efforts seem futile however and no matter what I do I always seem to fall perfectly into the next stage of my life.

The markers always find me. It doesn't matter what I do. Not that that ever stopped me from trying. I hadn't had a marker in three years though and I felt hopeful. All I wanted was for it all to end, I wanted to stop feeling like I was loosing my mind and I was so tired of being bored.

Bored of life, bored of today and tomorrow too. And I was tired of being scared to die. I get closer to it every second... that final marker. And I hated myself for it, for waiting.

But only because it made living a difficult thing, I mean.... what was I living for? To avoide the way my life is suppose to go... to run from death. In my defence, who wouldn't run?

But what's worse was the future. How could I not despise it with every fiber in me when I felt cheated of it in a way? It would always seem bleak when I  know all about it. So I could deal with dieing, just as long as I didn't have to live each day twice. Just as long as I could live to begin with.

And I'd been doing well lately but still a marker came. And months of my life played out before I even got to experience it. I wanted rip out my hair in frustration I tell you. I instead quiet my job, sold my house. Bought a plane ticket and came here.

It wasn't in the plan. Not the pre written list of experiences in which I lived anyway. I wasn't ever meant to be here. Not in this life time at least, so ultimately there wasn't anyway a marker could come. I was free. I hope. Some time during my introspection I checked the time on my phone.

It was five and I was tired of being alone with myself in the dark. Honestly my thoughts had taken a turn for the worst. Something that got in the way of my newest resolution which was to simply be happy. Or try anyway.

Life seemed so uncertain for me. I didn't have a steady source of income anymore. I also had no idea how I was going to get one.

I was alone in a new continent. And the only plan I had was coming here to begin with.