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Anne-Marie, you sound happy!

I've got a company phone & a company sim card. Every now and then, probably once a month I get a text message that reminds me about an appointment or check-up. Except the messages are for Ann-Marie, who I guess was the previous user of this sim. At first I paid these messages no attention. I pay most messages I get little attention. Everything just whizzes past my eyes. I've been getting a reminder from a dentist I don't go to for 5 years & I can't care enough to reply & say dude, move on, I have a new dentist.

But gradually, the messages started to paint a picture. There was once a reminder to take a pet to the vet for their vaccine. This sounded like a message she didn't want to miss.  But more importantly, I could have a doggie! I could have finally got my life together and moved to that suburb near the beach where I bought a house with a yard and took my doggie for beach walks. I was reminded to contact a doctor for a test. Could I have melanoma? In this sun very probable. Once there was a message from a Carol who wanted me/Anne-Marie to save her a seat at the church because she was running late that Sunday for the service. I was bothered by what my insensitivity & silence could do to their friendship -and by the fact that I went to church-, specially since she messaged half an hour later & said she had made it! Still no reply from Ann-Marie. That didn't sound very friendly, did it? Carol was going to spend the entire service looking at the back of actual Ann-Marie's head thinking "Bitch, didn't even say OK!"

I get other random messages on my phone too. Yesterday there was one from someone I guessed was a husband, asking how I was & if I wanted him to pick up a barbari -Turkish bread- on the way home. I thought for a second, why don't I have a husband who will pick up some barbari on the way home & checks if I want the same bread every afternoon at the same time? He's probably an engineer, very hairy and not too romantic. I wondered if we had kids?

I can't help wondering what my life could have been every time I get a message from these parallel universes. The endless versions of the life I could have lived; I could have a friend I saved a seat for on Sundays. I could believe in an afterlife. I could still be wearing thick glasses, could have a garden & a dog. I could be dead.

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