02: it happened again (sort of)

It didn't happen again, at least not in the same way. I've been checking the corridor every morning like a lunatic and it is aggressively, boringly four doors.

But something else happened and I think it's the same raccoon in a different hat.

I was at the grocery store after work, the one by the highway with the big yellow sign. My roommate had texted asking if I could grab oat milk (gross), so I was there later than I'd normally be, and the store had that late feeling where the lights are on but the sound's been turned down. I was in the cereal aisle reaching for the off-brand frosted oat squares (They’re cheaper and they taste EXACTLY the same) and I had the strongest déjà vu of my life. Not the little flicker where you go "huh." The whole-body kind. I just knew the box was going to be slightly dented on the top left corner before I turned it around. I just knew the kid two carts down was going to drop something. I just knew the song was about to change.

It was. He did. It did.

People say déjà vu is a glitch in your brain, a memory getting filed as "old" while it's still being written. I've read that. It's a nice explanation. It's the explanation I'd have given you a month ago.

But as I was lurking around there in the cereal aisle, it's not what I felt. It almost felt like I was watching a scene I had already seen, already been in, from inside, and the scene didn't know I remembered. Like the store had been rewound and played again, and everybody else had gotten their cue and gone back to the beginning of the clip, and I hadn't.

Here's the thought I can't shake, and I have to write it down because it sounds too insane when spoken out loud:

What if the hallway at work and the cereal aisle are the same kind of mistake?

What if whatever or WHOever put a fifth door in my hallway noticed that I had noticed, and took it back? And what if, in the store, it took back something bigger. Not just a door but like a whole minute, actual time. Ran it back, played it again. And everything went along with it, the kid, the song, the dented box, everything except that part of me that had already felt the minute go by.

You can reset a room, I do it all the time, but I don't think you can reset the feeling of having been in the room.

I'm going to start writing these down properly. Times, places, what was wrong, how fast it got fixed. Like a count sheet. If I'm losing my marbles, at least there'll be a record of exactly how.

If I'm not losing it, I want to know what's happening to me.