Unlived Lives: Reincarnation Song.

A few nights ago, I woke at 4.30am in the dark. I went back to sleep and had odd, fitful, unpleasant dreams. In one of them, someone from the past with whom there was a lot of conflict reappeared. 

I woke up with a myriad of other lives in my head. All the what ifs. Life’s butterfly wing moments, when if I had made a different decision in one tiny instance within one small situation of my life, everything would be different. They drive me mad, these parallel universe lives. There are key moments to which I keep returning, usually those moments that preceded something negative. 

Yet it’s not that I don’t love the life I have in so many ways. I think it’s more that I’m greedy. Like Victoria Wood, sometimes ‘I want to go round and round just living every life in sight.’ I want to try out every possibility. 

When I first heard her ‘Reincarnation Song’, I was a child, watching TV in the living room with my sister and dad. I didn’t really understand much of what she was singing about but her line ‘my mashed potato will have big, grey lumps in’ was clearly recognisable as my mum’s cooking and had me in fits of laughter. It was this memory that came back to me years ago in the department office of the college where I was working when I heard she’d died. I sat with colleagues and we played this song and lamented her loss. Perhaps the fact that this memory took place in the company of Dad, who died years before, made it even more poignant.

Like Victoria, I’d like a window into all the different lives I’m living in each parallel universe…

In one, I am still in Cairo, speaking Arabic remotely competently, running the English Department. I still love working at the school and sometimes stop to breathe in the leaden, hot air to remind myself where I am. In the evenings, I go to coffee shops or bars with friends. I collect air miles with EgyptAir and go back every break to the UK to see family and friends. I live in a big apartment, the backdrop of horns and calls to prayer floating in through the open balcony doors.

In another, I am a mother. I take my child to school each morning. I love them so that it feels like my heart bursts each day with the power and joy of it. I also hover over them, worrying endlessly about what harm might befall them. I worry that my worry is hindering them. Sometimes, I get really cross and shout and wonder how I ended up here, in domestic drudgery. I wonder when I will be free again and immediately feel guilty, scooping them towards me in a smothering hug while I kiss their forehead.

Or maybe I passed French at university. I went there and can speak it pretty fluently. I visit a lot, drink red wine and eat baguettes and feel like it’s my spiritual home. I sit smugly in cafes thinking about how sophisticated and cool I am. 

There’s lives in which things didn’t go so well. In one I am homeless, something that vividly frightens me and which I cannot believe still exists in a country as rich as the UK. I curl up in doorways, terrified and freezing, unable to believe the callousness of society, of those who step by me without even acknowledging my existence.

In one window, I didn’t leave a relationship I should have. I never learnt how to put myself first, how to stick to boundaries, how to tell someone their behaviour was unacceptable. I remain unhappy but unable to assert my power.

There’s lives in which I never left the civil service, went abroad for visa work. The endless stamping of paperwork bores me. Refusing people’s applications has grown an edge of hardness, bordering on the cruel, within me. 

In some, my dad is still alive and both parents are robust and healthy. I go round to their houses for dinner. I watch TV with them and we meet for lunch, go for walks, talk about my childhood - and theirs.

There’s another window in which I live in the north of the country and speak with a different accent…

I start to feel my brain’s desire to spontaneously combust and bring myself back to right now, sitting in this chair, next to the monstrous house plant which continues to grow despite the season. 

I think about my job, my course, my friends, my family. M replies to the message I sent him earlier. I look at the books I’m reading, ignore the emails that need me to take some action. 

I think of all the previous real lives I’ve lived, stacked inside me like matroushkya dolls. The child, teenager, teacher, partner, expat, student, friend, sister, aunty, daughter... Some of them don’t co-exist easily. The quiet withdrawn part of me hides from the loud, confident one. The good student and the rebel sit in opposite corners, ignoring one another. But they share odd glances and are curious about each other.

I decide to gather them all together and go out into the Autumn sunshine of the real world.