Cosmic Chaos!

Together into this!

Do you ever make plans for summer and what you’re going to do with your friends, where you’re going to go or how you’re gonna spend all your free summer time? For me, summer is the best season of the year, and moreover for the fact that it is also my birthday. But in summer you can swim, go out, dress cool, hang out, party, and do a couple of activities or jobs that you can’t do while you are at school. You are free from the pressure of school and the only thing you had to do, is enjoy the next 3 months having the fun and the freedom you had been waiting months for.

This summer was different for me. Well, first of all, as you all know, I was 5 years back into the past, had a terrible accident happen to me, and moreover my whole life was totally upside down. Nothing is the same for me anymore. I reached my end point, I got depressed for a while and now I am working with an awesome team on how to fix all this. What can I add more?

My birthday was approaching and in two weeks I would turn 21. Well, 21 if I was in the present. I remember that in 2017, I had my sweet-sixteen birthday. It was the greatest birthday ever. It was my ex-boyfriend, Nicholas, who surprised me with a little puppy, which we named Lucky. Lucky is still part of the family, that i***t Nicholas is not. Moreover, my little sister (at the time she was around 13), who, as I have told you before, has lived to the hype of being the smartest in the family, planned together with my best friend Gina, to try and surprise me by taking me to my 16 favorite places and Gina was the one who followed me everywhere and took pictures and videos of me while visiting these places. And in each of the spots, were pictures and also a birthday gift for each place. There were also important people from my family and life, with a game and a postcard in their hands, for me to play and win. It took me 5 hours to finish it all, and I am telling you, when you look back at the past and someone reminds you of those great memories, you can’t get any more emotional than that. They reminded me of my ups and downs, and how proud they were of me being who I was back then.

Well, if you look back and remember how great those years were, you’ll always feel happy, But I didn’t know how to feel right now, knowing that I am living once again in those years, and they are not memories anymore. Somewhere, in two weeks, the 2017 Casey will celebrate her 16th birthday in every detail I described to you, but in reality, the Casey from the future knows it all. I have always said, I wish they could take me back to the past, at least to do some things once again. Well, it had become reality for me, just not in the same way as I had desired. I had always loved the idea of having another sweet sixteen birthday, because it was for many reasons, the best birthday I ever had. I suppose the universe just said to me, “here you go, your wish has become true. I’mma take you back to 2017”. But with this whole situation, celebrating my 21st birthday felt weird knowing the other me was celebrating her 16th. If there is one confusing thing about time traveling at this point, it was the fact that many events you celebrated at a younger age would happen once again. You would know every detail of them and moreover, you could celebrate them twice. I don’t know how people would think if they could listen to me right now. “Is she crazy?” “Is she lost?” Bruh, no one would understand the mess that I am in right now. Somewhere, in this insane reality that I crash landed into for whatever reason, the same person would celebrate the same things that I did a few years ago, unknowing that I am still a part of this reality and not in the reality that I was normally living. If everything was normal, I would be celebrating my 21st birthday, and experiencing all the freedom that I had always desired. But now I have to ask myself many times, am I turning 16 or 21? The universe is somehow trying to troll me.

However, though this reality could be worse for me, somehow after the storm, everything became calm and safe. The first moment I ended up in this reality, I would have never thought I would make the friends I have, find a job, live as a normal person, and moreover have people by my side who want to help me get through it, and fix what is broken. I should not complain about this. It could be worse, well definitely much worse than I would have ever thought. But me crashing in the same timeline where I lived a couple of years ago, still confuses me a lot.

Everything was going as expected. The team was working really hard on this. The professor, the mastermind of the team, was trying to find a solution to my situation day in and day out. He was the one who was trying to motivate me to not lose hope. Every time I met him, he just kept on giving me the motivation I needed. He always said things such as:

- “Martha you look great today,” or “You are helping us a lot Martha,” or when he sees that I am sad and lost in my thoughts he always says to me, “Hey we are here for you, don’t be sad,” and other nice and sweet things to me.

Even though I don’t do much of anything to help them, the professor always tells me that I am helping them enough, maybe just so I don’t feel worse about myself or feel useless at all. On the other side, Nick and Luis were always calculating things and drawing. I used to visit them on daily basis, and both of them had turned the office into a museum of science. Oh, I forgot to mention, the professor made sure to find us two offices with all the modern equipment we would need to figure out everything. He spoke to a couple of his friends in the NASA institution, and they secured us two big offices with a ton of modern and expensive devices and equipment.

Both Luis and Nick were working a lot on daily basis. And they were both smart boys. Sometimes we hung out somewhere after work, and I ended up becoming close friends with both of them, but especially with Nick. We got to know each other more, and I think Nick also had a crush on me. It was honestly a mutual feeling between us both. Just like his father, Nick was always giving me support and motivation when I needed it. And we would stay close to each other every time we hung out. And at some point, Luis understood what was going on. Sometimes he’d try to mess with us, trying to joke and get us closer. I think he loved to see us together, as he knew Nick for years.

Most of the time, after work, I tried to spend more time in the boys’ office than in the professor’s. Not because the professor wasn’t a funny and great person or anything, but for the fact that I was getting so close to Nick and we were both taking it slow with getting to know each other more and who we are. And as expected, one week before my birthday, Nick invited me out on our first date. (Well, I had tried to be more obvious with my hints and I think Nick finally got the signal). He asked me while we were in the office and I’ll never forget Luis’ reaction. He was so ready to burst out laughing, but he tried his best to hold it in. I don’t know why boys are like this with each other. He was definitely happy from what I could see, but he was making fun of the way that Nick asked me. To be honest, it was not a big romantic proposal, but I guess that is how Nick does it.

At the moment I answered that I would be glad to go out on a date with him, Luis started applauding. The friendly teasing that Luis does, are incomparable to any other person. You’d think he is making fun of you, but in fact he is just joyful and wants to express his happiness by acting as if he is making fun of you, to relieve all the tension in the room, and to make us feel less stiff about our emotions. But what he said last was the greatest thing:

- “Finally! My boy got a date! I thought he would always die single.”

That made Nick a little bit angry and he tried to punch Luis in the arm, but it was more of a friendly punch than an angry one, he was just trying to tell Luis not to embarrass him anymore in front of me. Nick was a shy guy, so I get the point of him not asking many girls to go on a date, he would always be working and hung out only with Luis, so he was not the type of the boy who would go out to parties very often. But he was very handsome, and I’ve asked myself often why tons of girls hadn’t approached him at all.

On the other side, Joshua and Jessica were having the time of their life. They were living together and they were so happy that they decided to be together. In the last couple of weeks, I hadn’t met Joshua at all, only Jessica while at work, since I’d always go to the office after work and spend time with the guys or the professor. I finally had some time to hang out with Joshua and to tell him everything that was going on. Me, Joshua, and Jessica decided to go out for the first time in a while together, for dinner at an Indian restaurant, which was Joshua’s idea, just because he loved Indian food so much that he could eat it all day and night. The professor had allowed me to tell Joshua and Jessica everything, as long as they didn’t tell anyone anything about what the group was doing right now. I trusted them both a lot, they were the first that supported me when I arrived, so there was no reason not to tell them.

They were both listening to me and all the things that had been going on during the past few weeks. Well, Joshua was also eating a lot of Indian food, and to be honest, the Chicken Tikka Masala was very tasty. At some point, I told them about how Nick had invited me on a date and in two days I would go out with him. They were both surprised but also laughed a lot. At some point Jessica said:

- “This b***h comes from the future and she’s already taking all the boys from the present. Weren’t there enough boys in the future?”

We were all laughing and Joshua added at some point:

- “She just wants to add in her resume that she has dated boys from the past, nothing would beat that resume of hers after this.”

All the following jokes were about my date and then they asked me to show them a picture of Nick.

- “Now I see, this dude looks like he is from the future already. With this hairstyle, he do be living in 2021,” said Joshua.

- “He looks handsome, are you sure he is not a robot or a hand-made beautiful creature?” said Jessica.

Both were making a lot of fun about the fact that I was about to date a guy from the past but they were also very happy that I was dating someone.

- “Okay, we have two days time to make you look like a Parisian fashion-week model,” said Jessica.

- “I will make sure you look like a goddess of the future in that date,” she also added.

I looked very excited, so they said that they would do everything they had on hand to make the date go perfect.

- “Tomorrow, after work, we’ll both go shopping, Joshua you are invited if you want to come too.”

- “I want to, but I highly doubt I’m going to have fun while shopping. The last time I went shopping with you Jess, well that wasn’t much fun. She took three hours to pick a dress. THREE HOURS. How do you girls decide everything so quickly, but when it comes to clothes, you need three hours?” said Joshua, shocked.

- “Oh you boys, you will never understand how hard is it to be a girl...” replied Jessica calmly.

- “Oh yeah, we won’t understand how it takes girls three hours to make decisions about some dresses that look all the same to me with no difference at all.”

- “They were not the same, but it is true, boys only know like ten colors,” replied Jessica sarcastically.

They were both joking and laughing the whole time, and I had honestly missed that kind of enthusiasm a lot. Usually, Gina was always more emotional than me about my dates. And funny enough, Joshua and Jessica did the same thing. I was not the type of person to be super enthusiastic about boys and dates, so I needed people around me to cheer me on a little. Plus, I had been a little sad, unmotivated, and depressed and it had been a while since I was able to just chill and have fun. You can’t blame me, who thinks about love when you already have lost everything from your life.

Despite that fact, it seemed as if I was building a new reality, in another time, in another life of mine. Everything looked as it was filling all the holes in my life. Even though, as I said, my 16th birthday was with different people and in a different reality, at some point at the same time of the year, in my new reality, I had other people who were trying to fill my life full of emotion and love. I suppose, the Casey of this reality will experience the things that I did 5 years ago, but somehow, I, was going to experience some new and beautiful things, but strangely, twice. I guess time traveling is not that bad.