Crazy title, but it's appropriate.
This will make sense, I swear. ;)
I have been experiencing memories of things that never happened.
Yeah, it's freaky.
The first time it happened, it was after I had surgery on my foot. I'd remembered writing an email to a client and putting together an invoice. Vividly. Turns out, I'd never sent it, nor did any such invoice exist. And it wasn't hiding in my Drafts folder, either. I thought, hmm, general anesthetic screws with your brain for a bit...maybe it's that, and went along my merry way.
Until it happened a few more times, well past the time the anesthetic would have left my body.
So I did what I usually do in this situation. I researched it.
I found out some interesting things. For one, which blew my mind completely, is that your brain cannot tell the difference between a true memory and a false one. Let that sink in for a moment. There are cases where eyewitnesses to crimes had actually confabulated memories when prompted. They suddenly thought they saw a man walking a dog when they actually saw no dog if asked in a leading manner, for example. That's why eyewitnesses and memories are so complicated in law enforcement.
Another thing is that when you remember something, like, say, your first kiss, you are actually remembering the last time you remembered it, not the actual memory. That could also lead to issues, because what if in the time between remembering, something could happen to mess with it, and you could be be remembering wrong!
So memory is notoriously tricky and can be tripped up by things. If you remember the whole Sybil thing, there was a whole camp of psychiatrists who felt that Sybil's psychiatrist planted the memories of abuse in her mind using suggestive language while hypnotizing her. She also used medications to keep her in an altered state. Supposedly. I just read a book on it, and I don't think there's proof either way. But it's fascinating.
So then I stumbled onto the multiverse theory and the idea that for each decision we make, an alternate universe is formed, an offshoot of this one. So, suppose if I decided to marry my college fiance instead of breaking up, is there an alternate universe out there where we got married, had 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence? Or if I stayed with my abusive ex-husband, is there an alternate universe where I stayed with him and suffered horribly? Or maybe there's an alternate universe where I never finished college — or didn't go at all — and now I am a Regional Manager for the fast food restaurant I worked at in my teens?
It's mind boggling how this could happen. And how many universes? Ten, fifteen, two hundred? All with some version of myself in them?
And then I really got to thinking. What if one of the alternate!Erins actually sent that email, and for some odd reason I am remembering it? Or hell, even experiencing it? And this is why I remember, because it actually happened?
What I actually think, fiction notwithstanding, is a glitch in the memory part of my brain. Sort of like deja vu, except the opposite. But then again, I have absolutely no proof that the multiverse thing exists, so I am leaving that one open.
Yeah, this is the shit I think about. I think it's because I write fiction, especially fantasy and sci-fi. I've trained myself to ask myself intriguing questions and following the path of something cool till I hit upon something even cooler. Sometimes, my brain is a strange place. I've always thought that being a writer meant having a flexible concept of reality.
So what does a novel have to do with this? Well, one, I'd love to write one exploring this concept. Dan Rix, one of my favorite authors, wrote a book similar to this where there were countless alternate universes and you could remember what the alternate!yous did. I reread that book every couple years or so. Never get tired of it.
The TV show Fringe also had an alternate universe. The interesting part about that was that the alternate universe was ever so slightly different from ours. Mundane things had different names, cities were spelled differently, there were different people high up in government...so much fun.
But there's also a book of my own that has an alternate universe in it. Maybe several. And, in it, the characters can see what the alternates are doing. It's part of a supernatural thriller/mystery/erotica thing I've been working on on and off on since 2010. The alternate universe has alternate!main character 1 and alternate!main character 2 in it, but neither knows of each other's existence aside from those moments when they "see" each other. It's fascinating, fun, thought provoking, and I love it.
I just have to finish it. That would be a good thing. It is almost done.
What do you think of all this? Is my brain just weird, or is something truly extraordinary at play here? Let's talk in comments.
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