How do you summarize one’s life, their collection of experiences, thoughts and actions, into mere words in an attempt to get others to feel and understand what that individual went through? Well, you can’t but I am going to try anyway, cause that is how I am. But for me the bigger question is, how do you introduce someone that is both dead and imaginary, but also more alive prevalent than ever?
Welcome to my world. The parallel universe of Toby Breckenridge.
Before I get into more details I want to sort of set the stage for Toby and who he is. So let me say one thing:
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You only live once, but living once means living many times as a series of similar but technically different people who know each other but only in one direction and who can help each other, but only in the other direction
That quote is from this video, and is a good representation of what I am going through. Toby Breckenridge was my realization of a new me; someone who was different from who I had been the rest of my life, yet physically still the same person.
This summer had been a rough one for me. I was depressed, had mostly lost everything and everyone I loved, and was on the brink of self destruction. I had planned to kill myself the same day my father had died from cancer 5 years before.
But then I didn’t. I don’t know why I didn’t go through with it; I didn’t feel any better nor did I have a conscious battle over if I should kill myself or not. The best way to describe it was I went into a sort of emotional comatose state for the summer. I remember very little of what life was like for the next few months. It was like I had died anyway. And I stayed that way over the course of the next few months.
It wasn’t until November, when I was tired of the situation I was going through, that things started to get better. It didn’t get much better, but I started to feel more angry; which after not having felt anything for 5 months, was sort of refreshing in a way. But I knew I needed to get out, that the people and situations in my life were keeping me from being who I wanted to be.
And that’s when Toby was born.
I wanted to start over, to get out of my past life. The mistakes I made, the people (or lack of) in my life, all of it had turned into something I wasn’t willing to live with. So I started planning. This time it wasn’t to kill myself, it was to kill my old self.
At the time my plan had been to either fake my death and start completely new, which at best was dangerous and difficult to execute. My other option was to lie where I was going and hide in plain sight. Either way, I was planning on staying close to home, so I could keep the few relationships I loved, but still start fresh. I had found an awesome place to rent, a job that would make a steady amount of money, and had packed up my least obvious stuff to prepare for a swift exit. I was so determined to go through with this plan. It had given me something to work towards, something to live for.
But shortly after meeting with the person I was going to rent with, my vehicle died. Not only did that mean I didn’t have a vehicle to use for my plan, but I also had to pay for a new one, something I couldn’t do at the time with the immediate cost of paying rent and the damage deposit.
So I called it off. I didn’t move. I didn’t change my name. I didn’t cut ties with the people that were dragging me down. I was stuck.
But the determination stuck with me. All of the planning, working towards goals, it all had changed my perspective. I couldn’t say in what way, it just felt different. I had the same thoughts as before, but they didn’t mean anything anymore. I felt like a new person. I felt like I had become Toby.
And that is where the parallel universe comes in. Although I hadn’t moved away and became the person I wanted to be, in my mind I still had. I am living in a parallel universe where in my mind I had moved away, but am still in the physical world that I had never left.
It is quite something isn’t it. Well, if you want to hear more about my continuing adventures, I hope you stick around.
Toby out.
Toby Breckenridge 