Stuck

So you're reading this, so I guess that's a good start. Someone is reading this right now; you're going through the words that I have put down in this note and are able to understand them. I suppose that's the best I can hope for, but I do hope against hope that on reading this you will come to believe 2 things about this account:

1) This is not a work of fiction.
2) I am completely sane.

So let's get to it then: I am writing this from a park bench near Haight-Ashbury. I am watching myself. I have been watching myself for the last week. This is where those 2 big hopes come in, because I'm not watching myself in a figurative sort of way like minding my actions, and I'm not looking in a mirror or anything so mundane. No, dear reader, I am watching myself walk across the park. I know where I'm going. I am watching the events from April 24th of my 26th year. I have a dozen white roses in-hand, and I am going to the other end of the park to meet my girlfriend. Well, she's not my girlfriend I guess; it's his girlfriend, but he's me. Like I said, I'm completely sane, but you have to understand how complicated this is for me.

I'm not going to edit this. What you are reading is an account as it happens about my encounter having somehow wound up 18 years into my past.

I honestly don't even know what I was doing in SF, anyhow. I suppose it seemed like a worthwhile change of pace at the time, and she was here, so that probably accounted for 80% of the decision. Folly of youth. Would that I could warn myself about this. I know, I know; the past me is right there, and he's about to make a huge mistake, and I can fix it. You'd like to think that, but no, no I can't. Sure any misplaced blade of grass could affect the timestream in ways I couldn't possibly understand, and I'm still here and haven't done much of anything to upset whatever balance might exist, but I am paralyzed by an unshakable fear of what would happen if I were to intervene in my past, so I'm stuck watching as I walk to meet Kristen with those damn roses on her damn birthday with a damn ring in my pocket.

In approximately 10 minutes she says no, leaves me, and I spend the next 4 years in and out of depression/treatment/alcoholism. I would do a lot to erase those 4 years, or replace them with something else, but hey, aside from inexplicably winding up in the past I rather enjoyed the rest of my life after that. Today is a bad example, though.

I'm watching arguably the saddest moment in my entire life, and I feel completely powerless to stop it, as If I'm being strung up like a marionette on the strings of fate. I'm stuck here watching myself sit on the bench waiting for her, and I can see her walking past the me writing this and towards the young me. He... I don't see her yet. She is going to plop down on the bench next to me and sit right on the roses. She's going to yell at me and I'm going to calm her down and then the ring is going to pop out and then...

Wait.

Oh shit.

I just stood up. The younger me is standing up. I'm walking away. I can't fucking believe I'm walking away. She's just standing there staring at my back as I'm walking away. This is great! I bet she can't even fathom how I could have left before she got there. She actually looks really upset. I am so goddamn proud of myself right now, and hey, I'm still here!

Ok. Look, I'm going to stop here. I may be stuck in the past, but my future just became, possibly, a little brighter, and I think I need to go. I need to experience this first... well, second-hand.

Over and out.