Sliding Doors

On imagining different choices

I was with a dancer friend of mine named Anja the other night and she told this story. Her parents had almost named her Bettina, she said, but settled on Anja. She didn’t know anyone named Bettina, or anyone else named Anja with that spelling, but one day she was traveling in Germany and sat next to two women named Anja and Bettina. And she said it struck her that whether she had been named Anja or Bettina, at that moment she would have been sitting next to someone with the same name as her. It was like her two timelines converged.

That reminded me of the movie Sliding Doors, in which the main character, Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, creates two timelines in her life, one in which she makes the subway train she’s running to catch, and the other in which she doesn’t. The Helen who catches the train makes it home in time to find her boyfriend cheating on her (and immediately dyes her hair blonde so we can tell the two Helens apart) and their lives further diverge from there.

Whenever I think of Sliding Doors, I also think of my friend Alex, whose wife saw that movie shortly before they met and decided it was important to her to marry someone funny like the character James, played by actor John Hannah. Alex is funny! Boom, magic! But what if Julie had seen a different movie that day, one with a serious, brooding leading man? She might have overlooked Alex entirely! Their two, now-teen daughters would never have been born!

I’m not a therapist, so please don’t take this as psychological advice, but one thing that has been helpful for me in understanding my own life is to look back at significant points and imagine what might have happened had I made different decisions, or had different choices available to me. It seems kind of counter-intuitive, like it would be dwelling on the past, or beating myself up, or wishing I could change things that aren’t actually changeable. But somehow those thought experiments have been helpful to me. Maybe they give me a sense of empowerment that carries over into the present? Maybe it makes me feel like I have more choices for my life now? Maybe it’s a way of reaching out to my inner child and telling her that I’ve got her, that she’s safe? I think, for me, it’s a way of sort of putting that question, “what if?” to bed by writing (or thinking) it through to the end.

What would have happened if instead of the campus Christian group I had gotten involved with the drama club, or the hiking club, or the LGBT group? What if I had been more practical, and prescient, and majored in computer programming or graphic design instead of religion? What if I had known back when I was thirty-two and deep in crisis that I was experiencing autistic burnout rather than just depression and anxiety, and what if there had been resources to help me? What if I had left the bad living situation sooner, or the bad relationship, or said yes to a different relationship?

Or what if I had simply, one day, run to catch a subway train I otherwise would have missed?

For today’s writing prompt, I’m suggesting we ask and answer one of those what if questions. It could be something about our own lives, or we could imagine two timelines for a character we invent. Or we could rewrite a story written by someone else—what if Cinderella made a (human) friend at the ball, and they were so busy chatting (because she could take to her in a way she never could to the birds and mice that dressed her) that she never danced with the prince?

You don’t have to chose something big or traumatic, in fact, if you have trauma in your past you might not want to write about it without a therapist’s support. It could be something small or simple, something that only makes a difference in the way it ripples out effects.

Okay, writers, have fun! I’ll see you back here Friday where we can share what we wrote.

Love,
Jessica