I was in the middle of working on the final chapters of my book when my daughter’s laughter made me look through the window. The study, or „Mom’s writing room“, was on the ground floor and the French doors opening to the patio allowed a gorgeous view of the lush backyard and my kids playing there with our dog.

I was not a dog person, actually, I liked animals but not in my house. However, the kids wanted a dog, of course, and now our clingy Labradoodle, Lady Dana, followed them around and all of us like a shadow.

I sighed with satisfaction. Though I was in a creative rut, deleting and editing for hours on end, I had a life just like the one I had imagined when I was 16. Back then, I was obsessed with writing and practiced the speech for the Nobel Prize (I would later discover that prize was not always fairly awarded for Literature at least. No wonder Sartre refused it providing great arguments as well!).

Back then I knew I wanted THE BIG BOOK PRIZE, regardless of what the prize could be, a great husband who could support the family if my writing failed and we had kids. Long ago I decided I would stop working if I had kids – oh, what did I know then? Nada, zilch. I practiced my speech, like every other girl, using my hairbrush as a microphone, thanking my publishers and, of course, „my loving husband without whose support I could have never gotten that far“ (and I called myself a liberal feminist, ha!) „and my two kids who had been the source of my creative juices flowing“ (highly unlikely considering the genre that brought me fame, but hey, that’s what you say when you’re on stage, right?).

When the life gives you lemons…well, put yourself first and simply throw them back at life and ask for more. Otherwise, my dreams would have never become true.

The life took the lemons back and gave me a financial, handsome genius for a husband, maids and two kids. The talks with them could fill up ten books and regale the world (or at least those who read those kinds of books) with laughter and joy. Naturally, heavy editing would have been a must!

My phone beeped. My brother kept texting about our father’s funeral. I sighed and decided to let go of writing for the time being. I needed to book a flight.

Living in limbo

The first time I noticed something was wrong, I was standing in an airport that didn’t exist. At least, not the one I remembered from my booking info.

The signs were in German, the robot was transporting the dishes and breaking them a little, and my boarding pass – creased in my hand – had my name printed above a logo I’d never seen before. SkyLine International. The plane’s destination read “Zürich”, but I was sure I’d been in Soissons tucking my kids into bed after the babysitter had left and being driven to the Orly Airport the night before.

Or maybe I was dreaming? My brain had a habit of making me have recurring dreams made up of my desires and wishes when I was younger. Those had been dispersed long ago due to wars, poverty and injustice. I stood there, the crowd parting and folding around me like a living tide, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if I was awake. I was, my passport told me I was Marina Krivoruchko, Moscow native, citizen of the world, UK citizenship. The documents in my briefcase and on my laptop said I was a top executive in an international HR company who travelled the world as if her life depended on it.

My phone buzzed.

Luc ❤️: When’s your flight? Nicolas misses you already.

I stared at the message, trying to remember if they got the right recipient. My mind was blank. Just flashes – hotel sheets, a glass of wine on a nightstand, the faint hum of a city at night.

And someone’s voice.

A man’s.

“You’re always on the go, Marina. Don’t you ever stop to smell the roses?”

I blinked, and the boarding gate number flickered.

By the time I arrived at the client’s office, I was running on autopilot. Smile, handshake, pitch deck. My slides were perfect, my tone persuasive, my smile convincing. But when one of the executives asked, “How did you find Zürich?” I said, without thinking,

“Familiar.”

The word slipped out like muscle memory.

That evening, I fell into bed in a hotel suite so luxurious I wished I had lived there all my life. I turned off my phone and fell asleep into oblivion.

I loved my life. It made me sacrifice having my own family but I loved traveling, signing people up, having random encounters with perfect strangers. At times when the emptiness became unbearable, I would simply lose myself in the memories of who I could have been. Or not.

The life as it is

When I woke up, I was in my grandparents’ old apartment. My brother left 17 missed calls. I jumped out of bed. It was our father’s funeral today! I was supposed to go to his apartment at 6AM to help him prepare everything for the funeral.

My laptop sat open on the table, emails waiting. I took a quick shower, dressed in black, put on a bit of make-up to cover up sleepless nights and pallor. I hadn’t told anyone that I might be the next to shop for a nice satin-padded coffin but there was no need to tell anything…yet. There was still a flicker of hope. The doctors may have called that “unrealistic optimism” but that was my persona I could not push aside. She would take over whenever I was hospitalized and entertained the staff.

I joined my brother and noticed there were so many people I had never seen before. At one point, I just couldn’t take it anymore so I took refuge in a nearby shoe shop. My cousin from Croatia found me there and dragged me back.

Seven hours later everything was over. My brother noticed Dad’s signet rings were missing as well as Mom’s coral ones.

“Again”, he sighed. “Must be one of them”, he added tiredly, referring to one of our uncles and aunts.

The life I never wanted

My grandma had been dying for weeks. I was all alone with her save for those hours I was at work and the nurse took over. She drained my pockets and lectured me she would have never done voluntarily what I was doing for my grandma. But I couldn’t let go like that. The only person that ever loved me for myself. My brother was abroad, all other family members kept their distance because “they had lives” and my life was reduced to keeping my Nanna alive, though it was a bit cruel since she couldn’t recover. Her brain had deleted the fall completely and she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t stand. I spent nights and nights listening to her conversations with invisible people from her childhood and past. I would recount those “dialogues” to her sister later who tried to connect the dots.

One night she yelled at me for being in bed on top of the children.

“What children?”, I asked baffled.

“The children! Can’t you see them? There are eleven of them!”

I left the room, burnt the incense and started going from room to room. I even did the balcony, just to be sure. It was 4 AM and I had no idea if I was able to stand on my feet.

The following night my grandma was crying, begging me to let her go to her mother.

“You’re keeping me here and my mother wants me to go to her”, she sobbed. That night I decided to let her go and told her she was free to go to my great-grandmother.

The night before she died, she said:” Dear, you’ve been coughing a lot lately. Promise me you’ll see a doctor when I’m gone tomorrow.”

I hid my tears and promised. She died in my arms. Her last heartbeats were like metal hitting the armour.

Living the dream

Sam finally decided to accept the position of the ambassador in Vienna. I was thrilled! Back to Europe, closer to my nieces! They could be able to come whenever they wanted.

Our first week in Vienna was busy but I wanted my brother and his family there. I provided them with a driver and a Jeep and gave them the whole wing in the renovated castle where we resided. It was the dream come true: having my family so close again. Walking around Vienna, inhaling that crisp Christmas Austrian air.

My friends were also close – Austria, Germany, France, Norway, Iceland. I thanked all the lucky stars in the world for letting me have that one.

Life may have given me lemons in the beginning but they turned into sweet figs and new beginnings. Sam didn’t want children, I couldn’t have any but there were other kids we could take care of. So many of them needed people like us. I was finally able to devote myself to my charity “You are not alone”, working on providing abandoned kids with decent living conditions, education and love.

However, the first night in Vienna, something weird happened. That night, I dreamed of him.

We were walking through a park in springtime, sunlight breaking through the trees. He said something about choices, about how every decision branches out into a new world.

“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” he asked.

“What?”

“The places that feel like déjà vu. The faces you almost recognize.”

When I woke, my pillow was damp, my heart pounding. I opened my laptop and checked the project files – none of the work from Zürich existed. No slides. No meeting notes. Not even a single email trail.

As if it had never happened.

The life disintegrated

That weekend, Luc confronted me.

“You’re not here anymore,” he said quietly. “You come home, but you’re somewhere else. Even the kids notice.”

“I’m just tired,” I said. “Writing and traveling mess with my head.”

He nodded, but his eyes were full of doubt. “Then maybe stop. For a while. Just stay. Focus on yourself and your writing. We’ll be always there for you.”

I wanted to, really, but I didn’t know where I’d end up if I slept again.

No more flights

When I opened my eyes, I was already moving.

A smooth vibration under my feet, the rhythm of train tracks. Outside the window, city lights smeared into amber streaks. I didn’t remember boarding the train, but my reflection in the glass was alert, awake, lipstick perfect. The digital sign above my head read “Welcome to Kopenhagen.”

I blinked hard.

I’d never been to Denmark.

My phone lit up. New messages from him. The photos I didn’t remember taking. Us clinking glasses at some rooftop bar, skyline burning behind us.

My hand trembled. I pressed my fingers against the cool glass, watching the skyline rise. The city glowed like a thousand screens flickering at once, alive and electric.

The hotel room was familiar in that déjà vu kind of way. Beige walls, chrome lamps, a view of skyscrapers cutting into mist. My suitcase was by the bed. My name on the luggage tag was typed.

I opened the closet—two suits, perfectly pressed, in colors I hated. Beige and taupe.

When I turned, he was leaning against the doorframe.

“Long trip?” he asked.

I almost screamed and then I felt a strange calm. Like my body already knew him, muscle-deep.

“You again,” I whispered.

He smiled, that same unreadable curve. “You’ve been crossing over more often. It’s getting harder for your mind to sort things.”

“Crossing over?”

He walked to the window, gesturing at the city. “Every version of you makes a choice. Sometimes, you slip between them.”

I was astounded. “You’re telling me I’m… what? Traveling between universes in my sleep?”

“Not in your sleep,” he said. “In your multiverse.”

I stared at him. “You sound insane.” He just smiled.

He stepped closer. “This city – it’s one of yours. You built this version through every decision you made to stay late at the office, every time you said I’ll call tomorrow. You’ve chosen this world, Marina. But several others have chosen you.”

That night, I dreamed – or maybe remembered.

A dinner table. Luc’s laugh. My daughter’s small hand reaching for mine. My son in Luc’s lap.

The room smelled of baked potatoes, wood wax and clean laundry. It was calming, and it hurt.

Then, a flicker—the same room, but empty. The soup cold. The chairs ghosted with dust. I saw myself standing there in a sleek black suit, staring at the same spot where my kids should’ve been.

And then, his voice behind me: “Every world misses something.”

I woke up in tears.

The next morning, I found myself in hospital. I had just had a huge surgery and no morphine drip could have chased away the pain or lull me into slip.

The nurse insisted on getting up. Oh my God, half of my belly will rip apart, I thought scared to death. The first try was a failure. The pain was too deep. But then I decided to do it even if I ripped apart. I did get up, making quick small steps to the sink, washing my hands and face and barely managed to get onto the bed, avoiding the fall by inches.

That night the air smelled of rain and possibility.

“Every time you sleep,” he said, “you’re switching frequencies. You exist in all of them. But only one version gets to be real at a time.”

“Then why remember the others?”

“Because your soul doesn’t like being divided. It’s trying to bring them together.”

I shook my head. “You’re making this sound poetic. It feels like madness.”

“Maybe it’s both.”

He reached out his hand. “Come see.”

He showed me the headlines – “Awarded writer hasn’t been seen in ages”, “Famous author Marina de Lorraine appeared in public for the first time in a decade”, “Liberal feminist dies of cancer at 50”, “HR wizard goes off the rails” – there were so many of them.

I started vomiting and fainted.

The Fracture

The next few weeks dissolved into fragments – reality had turned into a deck of shuffled cards.

“I just want my life back!”, I yelled.

“Which one?”, he asked.

The question hit me like a punch.

He stood and approached. “Every Marina has made a different choice. Some were made by her, some were made for her. Marina in Vienna is living the dream. She has no kids but she loves her life. Still, she sometimes dreams about two kids that seem familiar and her heart feels like exploding when she wakes up. The writer seems to have it all but she misses her carefree life.”

“And what do I really want?” I asked.

He smiled faintly. “To remember you’re all the same woman.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. When I finally did, the dream wasn’t a dream—it was an invasion.

I saw flashes of a thousand Marinas across a thousand worlds—each mid-presentation, mid-meal, mid-travel. In one, I was divorced. In another, I’d never had a child. In one, I’d never left my hometown and was living in utter poverty, barely making ends meet. In one I was dying and regretted my choices where I put other people’s needs first.

Each of them looked up at once. Each met my gaze through the glass between us.

And then I heard a single voice – my own – whispering from all of them:

Choose.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t live like that anymore.

I opened the door. I saw every version of myself merge—the woman in heels and deadlines, the mother hugging her kids, the dreamer walking through airports, the lover staring at the skyline, the writer getting accolades, the ambassador’s wife hosting and enjoying herself.

And then—silence.

I had been everywhere. I had been everyone. And now, finally, I was here.

But it wasn’t enough to just be “here.”

I sat at the kitchen table, tracing the wood grain with my finger, thinking of every version of myself:

Each one had been me, pulling at my heart, leaving it stretched thin.

Somewhere, a plane took off for Zürich. Another train sped toward Kopenhagen. Somewhere, I existed in all of those places—but my heart was here, grounded, whole, and ready.

Finally, I understood: I didn’t have to leave one world behind. I just had to carry them with me. Every ambition, every love, every loss, every small choice became part of me.