We all know that a book within a book, or as it was in my case, a timeline within a timeline, usually does not work.
And yet!
This did not keep me from trying.

Since 2019 I have been writing a diary as if my life is happening 25 years-ago.
So I am 25 years younger, as is everyone around me including a lover whom lived on as “Bear” here in this altered universe, which started in 1994 (= 2019, minus 25 years).

When the affair ended, I gradually stopped blogging for that timeline. In 2024 and 2025 combined maybe like a handful of posts.
Then I stopped.
If there was anything remotely interesting, I’d write it offline and wait 2 years before publishing it into a book.

I hoped the 2 year delay would rekindle both the 2000 project, as well as my love life of course.
I don’t want to cockblock my Year 2000-self, by blogging all our secrets.

Last month, I created a Word file in the book-to-be format.
The diary starts when Lauren 2000 decides to rewrite her own history by going back in time, and pretend it was 1990.

This was the aforementioned timeline within a timeline;
Lauren2000 pretends it 1990, and she starts again.

The reason she did this was because she was tired of trying to get over the breakup with her lover Bear.
Something I can totally relate to, since I’m still recalibrating after the breakup with Mr.Big, although fortunately this is one of those things that gets far less painful with age.
But I’m in, girl!
Throw us back another decade Lauren 2000!
💪

Yet despite putting in the work, it turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

It was not that the alternative 1990 timeline itself stopped appealing to me.
I could still see that if at 17 years old, Lauren/ fictional me had made a different choice – to not team up with her lover Bear, and had focused on herself – it would have made for an amazing life!
And radically different to what both I had, as well as what my fictional 20th century Lauren had had with Bear.

I loved this the idea of starting fresh, in 1990.

However;
Lauren 2000 stopped wanting it.

She stopped wanting to erase the years with Bear, only because she kept feeling broken hearted.
It had been too important, too valuable.
Flaws and all.

What changed her mind was a 1995 Bon Jovi performance, of the song Damned. In particular the live version makes a powerful and seductive statement to just go for it.

“If loving you is wrong,” Jon Bon Jovi sensually sways his hips. “I don’t want to be right.”

Neither do we, Jon.
Neither do we.

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