On Possible Worlds and Alternate Realities

Despite my general distaste for all things philosophical, I used to love riding in Sak's passenger seat, requesting to hear about possible worlds. He would explain to me that, in all of the possible worlds, the essence of things would have to remain the same. That is, things that define an object--the spherical quality of a sphere, he would say--would have to stay constant. I would search my mind for things that would remain the same in all of the possible mes.

"I would have to be short, no matter what," I said, but he disagreed.

"Your height doesn't define you," he would say, but I would think about how I would be different if I were taller. A bit more "normal" perhaps; less loud and obnoxious. Somehow not me.

But instead of thinking about it that way, my mind would turn to the happenings and circumstances of my life that had propelled me this far and, inevitably, it would explore the possibility that the trajectory of my fragmented spine could have pushed into my spinal cord.

It's something I think about a lot, a subject that comes with the mixed emotions of relief and intrigue. Would I have graduated from college, gone to graduate school? Would I know the people I know now, and in what ways would these relationships be translated?

So, I ride in the car with Joe, who is excited about his overly large 1.6 mm pen. I mention that, with another .4 mms, he would be writing with the distance that stood between me and paralysis. We go through our standard conversation about how things would be if we were like we are now, with the exception of my ability to use my legs. He says he would have, by this point, gotten a handicapped van to drive me around. I have no doubt that this is true, us raising hell and him wrecking me constantly. Like now, people would not understand.

So, I sit in the therapist's office. In her attempts to force me to use the word "bipolar" as a noun and not an adjective [a theory made by people without mental illness to bring some unnecessary political correctness to the table], she asks me what I would call myself if I were paralyzed. I remind her that I came rather close. "If I were paralyzed," I say, "I'm pretty sure I would call myself 'paraplegic.'"

So, I'm lying in Joey's bed in my underwear, watching tv. My legs are curled behind me, my back in a delicate arch. The commercial is for a wheelchair that can do amazing things, including climbing stairs. I recount for him the awful statistics we had learned only two days earlier, that 80% of the partners of men who have spinal cord injuries stay, that 80% of the partners of women who have spinal cord injuries leave. The excuse that women are "more nurturing" and therefore more likely to stay has left me unsatisfied and angry.

His dark eyes look back at me, and I remember spoonfuls of orange sherbet that I eventually threw up on him, his swimsuit sprayed with Curve cologne, the crackers he drove to buy me when the Loritab made everything unpalatable. I speak what turns out to be a hybrid between statement and question. "You wouldn't have left me, right?"

But I know what I've always known. That I'm in the lucky 20%, that if there are other worlds, somewhere, I exist happily with my legs broken and my heart complete.