There’s a new man in my life, and I feel he’s entered on the wrong timeline and is connecting to the wrong woman.
Or not connecting, it all remains to be seen.

The chemistry is undeniable, yet undeniable is a strong word for someone old enough to see people deny everything from purpose and callings to carbohydrates and the primal urge to get together with the one you love.

Everything, can be denied.
And people who stir every cell in your body, are among the easiest.

If it is followed up upon, then it is called a mistake, a fling, a being carried away and blamed on not thinking straight.
Stripped bare of its alchemy, its higher meaning or the visceral urgency of it.

So of course I know that even if he would have similar feelings, which the chemistry implies, he can walk away from this in a heartbeat.

But what makes the whole situation frustrating, is that he does not know me under this name.
Just under my local name.

And part of me is happy about that, for multiple reasons all of which are boring as well as irrelevant to this conversation.
But what bugs me is that consequently the story is unfolding on the wrong timeline.

Because under my real name I only live on one timeline;
2025

Whereas under alterego I live in 2025, where I write all these blogs.
I live in 2000 where I keep an offline diary, recording how I try to rebuild my love life as a 28 year old who has been with the same man since she was 17, and who has now been alone for 1.5 to 2.5 years, depending on how you count.
The 1990 timeline is where Lauren 2000 is building a new life for herself.

Pretending she’s still in 1990, she wonders: 
“If I had not hooked up with Bear (her longterm lover) in the first place, and also had not gone to university, and also not become a writer but had focused on doing yoga and becoming a yoga teacher instead;
How would my life have unfolded?”

If this man would become a lover to the 1990 timeline version, that would be awesome! 
Lauren 2000 would write in her offline diary, how she was giving her younger self a clean slate, a brand new love life.

But even if Lauren2000 would not know how to do that, and would start dating this new man herself, it would be something she/I could write about in our offline diary.
(yes lots of consent conversations to be had beforehand, don’t get me started, I know)

But me dating in 2025?
Absolutely impossible, I have zero desire to.
In 2025, and in particular in my real life under my real name, everything is contained, planned and polished.
For me life in this timeline is so exposed, so vulnerable, so cramped in between the expectations of society as well as digital and other surveillance-
There’s no way I’m bringing my love life there.

So there is a new man, and next to the normal doubt of not knowing how this will pan out the upcoming months, there is the frustration that he’s seeing a version of me that is literally impenetrable, by design.

2025 Version of me has been stripped bare of its alchemy, of meaning and of her visceral urgency.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.