This is a short thought that bugged me almost a year ago. What does the freedom of thought have to do with our perception of reality? I asked too many questions of myself than I could answer. I choose now to leave this shard of my brain with you.

Have you ever wondered what déjà vu is meant to be? I’ve wondered about it a great deal, since a child, really. It’s followed me like a shadow since I was a boy. It’s a small creature that’s been stuck to the back of my head so that no matter how many times I turn around at its presence there’s nothing at all to see.

Have you ever had a dream that was not a dream? I’m not speaking of the dream that wakes you and convinces you of some ridiculous reality. No, I’m speaking of dreams that don’t feel real at all. You open your eyes and you think you can remember what it was but the memory is fleeting and it just disappears slowly with every conscious breath. It doesn’t feel like it should be too important. You go on with your life, you go back to sleep and you wake up again the next day, and soon you’ve forgotten it happened in the first place.

Have you ever had the hairs on your skin stand on end? Not from the cold but from a feeling or an idea? It hits me when the déjà vu creature moves from the back of my head and whispers in my ear. It tells me I’ve seen this before. It tells me I’ve heard this before. One sequence after another. I’m driving, I turn the corner, I see a red car next to me, I’m listening to a song, I hear a jackhammer down the road, I hear someone shout from the sidewalk. The creature taps me on the neck and hums with every observation. Doesn’t that feel familiar? Hmm, does it? It should, since you dreamed it so many nights ago, you dreamed the dream that couldn’t be real. And then it disappears and I can’t see it anymore and I think nothing of it, but the hairs on my skin still remember for a little while longer.

Have you ever believed in something? I’ve never had my palm read: I always thought it was a hoax. I haven’t been to church in a long time but I think something’s out there. I choose to believe in one thing and not another, and I feel like I should consider the weight of this freedom. I make the choice that feels right, the one that sets me at ease. If that’s the case, what should I believe about the creature?

Some days I want to understand it. I want to be a kid again who dreams of superpowers, who believes he can see into the future, and maybe if he tried hard enough—if he shut his eyes hard enough—he could be something amazing. But life doesn’t work out that way, even if I still want to be something amazing. I can’t close my eyes and be someone’s hero. Some days when the creature whispers it shows me something bland and unimportant, so perhaps it’s not something profound at all. Yet there are days it hits me with a sunken pit in my stomach. I close the lid of my laptop with someone else’s hurtful words in my head and dreary thoughts spilling from my lips and it’s not a game any longer. You remember this, don’t you? The creature whispers to me. I want it to go away. I’m sitting at a bus stop with music in my ears and I want to cry but the worse thing is that the hairs on my skin are standing and I feel like I’ve been here before. If I’ve seen it so long ago why can’t I make it stop? I want the superpower that keeps my heart from hurting. Why doesn’t it work the way I want it to?

It’s out of my grasp. I feel like I should be learning something from this. It’s unnecessarily frustrating. It’s an empty sort of parting wisdom from a faithless little creature that sits on the back of the head. It tells me I remember this but it doesn’t tell me why. I imagine that there’s a reason. There’s a reason for everything, I believe. And yet on the other hand, it’s my choice to believe. There’s a set of rules and laws of nature that I perceive to be a reality. So if perception bends reality then can I choose to not believe? Can I make the creature disappear?

The hair would still stand on my skin. There’d still be a whisper coming from somewhere. I can’t reason with it, you see, because things become muddled and I end up in an even greater confusion than from where I started. I just want to feel at ease again. Maybe when I die I’ll arrive in heaven and see the little creature. It’s got two eyes and a small little snout and a lopsided face and a stubby little tail. It sits at God’s feet. Maybe when I’m dead, when I believe I’m somewhere in the sky, I can ask God why I had a little shadow following me my whole life. And then He will answer me. It’s what I choose to believe.