In memoriam sui

Today was the day I finally opened the letter I had written to myself ten years ago.

I opened the envelope (yes it was in one!) and carefully laid it down on my bedside table.

It was addressed to Bowie, a name I thought embodied a kind of quasi-alter-ego that I also looked up to (and looked down on me from heaven)

Dear Bowie,

It started.

I can see you are at a crossroads.

I will begin by saying this will be increasingly more startling with each paragraph. So brace yourself and read it alone, in a room, possibly to the tune of some of the 70s classics from a lad insane, as they called him.

So I followed suit. I opened my Spotify and went straight to one of Bowie’s absolute best (in my opinion). It is from the eponymous album STATIONTOSTATION (sic.).

As the railway tracks echoed the rumblings of those ominous engines, I felt an eerie sense of nostalgic bliss.

I started reading on.

It’s been a while since we last spoke to each other – ten years to be exact. Oh and good choice with that song, as it is ten minutes long as this is probably a ten minute read.

Wait a second. I felt butterflies and a little nudge in my guts. How come, this song from a hundred others.

I am happy to say that you have made it thus far. I would’ve liked to say this of myself.

I felt his voice go somber, through the ink as it were.

How do you mean? I said in my inner voice. I am still here, so that, by definition, will have made two of us, no?

The doctor says it’s spreading like wildfire. There is a bit of lit already in my lungs and more have made their way to my windpipes. Decades of tobacco have finally caught up to me.

With each word, I felt a greater sense of foreboding – like something was eerily wrong.

 So, I guess this is time to say goodbye.

My heart sunk. My mind was dazed. It was as if I wasn’t myself anymore. I mustered all the energy I found in me and read on.

I have a year or two, if as much. But I will make sure you are in good hands.

??

I promise that you will be taken good care of hereafter.

That would’ve been quite reassuring, only it was the vaguest thing I’ve read since Ulysses. Thankfully, the letter didn’t end there.

I am going the way of all the earth. I shan’t be around.

I’ve partaken in the highs and lows, peaks and valleys.

Sometimes, it is y(our) future self who is your best friend.

But you can be their worst enemy if you’re amiss.

Either he was talking faster or I was reading in a hurry but the tone grew more and more urgent.

Your future self knows all. He is all. He is beset by the woes coming your way, and seeks to shield you of them. Your future is not written in the stars. You have a will, you have volition. Change course or let the course change you, as it had myself.

That is why I saw this day and came back to get you.

My very existence hinges on what you do with this letter.

It won’t be in your possession. It is a self-destruct message.

But if the letter bursts aflame with its fire burned in your mind, so be It.

Yes, I shall be no more, but yea, I say ye again, so be it!

 At those words that I regained consciousness.

My mind with all its gears and shafts. It was like I finally got ‘locked in’ to so-called Re-ality.

What felt an eternity of profundity just vanished into the white nothingness that was the ICU I was bedded in.

They say I nearly died. But, alas, I had never felt more alive.

 I wouldn’t say they were wrong though. Yes, I almost had died.

Only just.