I’m about ready to call it quits and go back home. After this one.

Wondering if every other world will have some bizarre flaw I can’t live with.

My thoughts wander as I walk a deceptively normal city, streets of similar design and technology to my own.

I’m either fuzzier than I realized or just not paying attention when I cross a street. A Honk-Screech gets my attention before I’m yanked back to the sidewalk.

I stumble, fall, hit my head. But the car misses me and anything else.

I’m told this when I wake in a hospital bed. This nice woman tells me, not a nurse, but a consultant.

I start to panic about hospital bills, but she heads me off, “This is a free clinic. You’re fine, just a scrape and light bruising. Very lucky. But I’d like to talk to you about other services we offer, like our past-life therapy, support, and re-integration programs.”

Say what?

“Here, we’ve got a group meeting in 30 minutes if you’d like to see, here’s a brochure…”

THE END

Another person facilitates a chair circle, first explaining how many people have past-lives, perhaps ancestral memories or ghostly echoes, reincarnation, they’re not sure. But when this bubbles up to the mind’s surface it can throw people off.

I’m absorbing this when they mention they offer government housing, free therapy, support and job networks, all to help people back on their feet.

Then around the circle, introducing everyone.

One guy was a stagecoach driver in the 1700s, and still finds himself whoaing and reacting to phantom horses and coach.

A woman was a swim instructor in the ‘50s, watched a boy drown who still haunts her now.

Another man drowned in the beach at Normandy, and is deathly afraid of water.

A pretty young woman next to me, Karla, was a morphine addicted medic in World War I, saw this when she took acid for the first time at a party, then later confirmed this with a Past-Lives consultant.

Then me.

I introduce myself, hesitate.

Then launch into it. “In my… past-life, I almost killed someone drunk-driving, really nasty wreck. Did ten years in the slammer. Then… got out, and had no one, no help. Was really alone.”

The facilitator says, “Well, you’re not alone now. Welcome, thanks for sharing.”

Munching on donuts and coffee afterwards, I’m approached by Karla, who shyly mentions there’s another addiction/DUI group she wants to go to, but doesn’t know anyone else. Would I maybe want to go to her?

I blink.

She’s cute. She, through her past life, has maybe been down similar roads as me.

Maybe I wasn’t 100% honest here, or maybe I was. What’s a past-life anyway? Here I’ve finally found acceptance, kinship, acknowledgment, support, a second chance at life, and maybe a chance at romance.

Smiling for the first time in a while, I say, “I’d love to.”

We make it a date. But there’s one thing I need to do first.

I take a few thousand dollars out of the backpack, enough to start me off here. I rip out the notebook pages about myself, leaving the explanation of going to other worlds. Then notebook in the bag, I drop it onto a park bench. It’s someone else’s turn to explore; they’ll need this more than I do.

My journey’s begun in a different way.