ever meet someone in your life that looks and acts nearly exactly the same as someone else you know?

i'm sure that's an experience people have maybe once or twice in their lifetime. someone with a similar name, maybe they look the same, that acts the same. maybe they have different interests but still have the same sort of act.

once or twice is normal, but really only when you're around in your mid twenties of age, i'd say. it's not that common.

on another note, ever meet someone in your life again? that is to say, see them once before in school, work, or other, and seem them again randomly, on the train, online, or some other place? someone you barely knew, too?

once or twice is normal, maybe even more if you're a sociable person. but again, i'd say that it's pretty uncommon you'd get back in contact with these kinds of people.

with me saying all of this, i'm sure it's no surprise that i've experienced having doppelgangers and repeat meeting occurrences a little bit more frequently than most.

so then, what's my answer?

it's six. of each. i've had six pairs doppelgangers, six repeat meetings, and twelve seperate crashouts and sparked internal fears of being faced with something again.

might i say, that being shown something that is the same, but different, is a little uncanny? i really have to ask myself if the universe is showing me things from my past to help me confront them (if i i were taking a spiritual lens), if everything in my life is just beginning to repeat itself over and over until it ends, or if i'm just memorable enough, sensitive enough, to be capable of even knowing these things, multiple times over the past 3 years. 3 years, i must say. isn't that a lot?

i can't go into each in detail, in reality, i'm still shocked as i write this because in the past *week* even i've been shocked with seeing someone from my past on instagram or on the bus. it's terrifying. and i can't exactly explain why, even though i think i know its reason.

it's like, looking at a photograph from 10 years ago, and remembering the fun road trip you went on with an estranged friend, only to have them contact you nine minutes later.

it's like seeing your best friend, someone who can do no wrong in your eyes, even if you think they might have a bit of an annoying voice, or bad conversational habit where they interrupt you sometimes, and then meeting someone in a bar that looks like them, and being absolutely repulsed. or attracted! what does that say about you to have to face this trait again, only in a different lens, only differently shaped in the glass having melted slightly on its left edge and not its right?

do you look and feel proud? hope? hopeless? afraid? do you look at the mirror that shows your face and notice that your eyes and lips have swapped colors every time you blink and feel your heart beat faster?

i think that's what it feels like, really. a kind of "what the fuck am i experiencing right now" kind of experience. it's terrifying. it's regretful, really, i think.

because that's also what i feel among the endless questions of "where have you been since i've seen you last?" and "how are you?" and "what's your life like now" that i ask each doppelganger and repeat meeting.

it's regret. regret that i see them. somehow, someway.

it pulses at my heart like wanting to say "hello" to a long lost friend thousands of miles across the country.

have they changed? do they remember? what do they think? what do they know, what life do they lead now?

because, well, everyone changes. everyone changes a lot. a truth of life, yes,

but what happens when your past catches up with you, one person at a time?

when each person you look at reminds you of a person you once were, a place you once occupied, a time you'll never get back?

what happens when you look back at that person, and think, "how the fuck could i have been that stupid, that ugly, that lame, that hopeless?", and you don't know if you've gone and made a difference?

and what if you have? what if you have? what if you truly fucking have and can't foresee what they'll think?

perhaps you're afraid. maybe i'm projecting. but truth that i grapple with, unlike them, unlike those, is this:

the person that i was never had goals. never had aspirations. never had morals, never had a life they wanted to live.

and, ugh. fucking... when you see that...

when you see that person you were, trying to be something, only to slip and fade into the darkness, and then that darkness clears and you are at that school desk again, that classroom, that building, that roadtrip, that home, that house, that room.

how do you come to terms with the fact that they reached the truth before you did?

that they knew what you didn't. and you were always lesser.

and now that you're here, truly here, fucking alive somehow, someway,

that you're a person, like everyone else. an adult. a leader. a follower. a person from the same place, same name, perhaps same essence, yet...

yet, new. again.

and new things are scary. always.

...

the keen of you may ask:

"what's with this misty? what's with the rants and the talks of yourself and identity? where did the analytical part of you go?"

but don't you worry. she's still there, but sometimes, it helps to have context.

stay tuned c: