When it comes down to it, I'm a fairly simple woman. I like what I like. One of the things I like most is the universe. And I don't mean that in the "space is pretty" sense of liking the universe, I mean I like understanding and reading up on theories and science and getting down to the meat of it all. Quantum physics loses me a bit, but that's neither here nor there. One of my favorite tattoos is my escape velocity equation. It sits neatly on my right side of my collar bone. Sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly saucy, I'll break out my most prized possession: my piece of meteorite on a silver star. I love that necklace, and I don't wear it often because I'm afraid I'll lose it. It's the days where I feel exceptionally finite that I put it on. It's oddly grounding.
One of my favorite theories is the relative state formulation, best known as the many worlds theory. While it's fairly complicated (the best way I can describe it in simple terms is to say that waves don't collapse, they simple branch off in a million different waves, each with a different function, but they're all tied to the same starting place. The ultimate implication being that we're living a million different lives, in a million different places, all at the same time), it's something I've dedicated a lot of time to studying.
The thing is, it's not the theory itself that I cling to, it's the gorgeously redemptive qualities of the simple explanation. I very much enjoy knowing that there's a universe out there where I'm doing it right. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and honestly, I regret almost none of them. I like who I am now, and I like where I am, and who I'm with. I miss my daughter, though. And knowing that there's a place clumped into that vast infinity where my daughter loves me as fiercely as I love her, and I get to watch her grow up.
When I left my daughter, I was a scared little girl that knew nothing about anything of substance. I made a slew of mistakes that snowballed into the biggest mistake I've ever made. My portfolio of failure is damn near invisible to anybody that looks at me. People don't know I have a daughter, and I like it that way. It keeps people from asking questions that break my heart. I don't think my daughter knows that I exist, and that's as ok as it can be, considering. I wish she knew who I was, and I wish she'd one day contact me to ask me what the fucking fuck happened, and why didn't I love her enough to stay, and to tell me she fucking hates me. All of that I can attempt to combat by telling her the details that people left out, and that's probably almost all of them. If my daughter knows anything about me, her scope of me and why I'm not with her are so limited as to not actually matter, in the grand scheme of things. It's worse to think that she doesn't know I exist at all.
My daughter is fucking gorgeous. She's this perfect mirror image of me, walking around, living a good life, not knowing or caring that she has this whole other universe of family and love and ache for her, nobody more than her mother. Her mother that just wants to tell her how sorry she is. For all of it. Because there's nothing else to say that helps, or erases it, or takes it all away.
So my only way to make myself feel better (which I thoroughly know I don't deserve) is to think about the places out there where Rhyann and I are a family. Where I can hug my daughter any time I want, and tell her myself that I love her, and she's one of the most beautiful things under the suns, however many of them there are. Those uncollapsed functions are my happy place.
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