This has happened before

I abruptly jerked from my sleep and instantly remembered being there before, when I never have been. I looked around, and the resemblance faded into a gradient, starting at the banisters and ending in the corners of the room, as if the recollection were right there, sneaking around in the shadows, just out of my reach.

The distinct impressions that future memories leave--in the form of smells, flashes, and lighting; the colors of the paint and the creaks of the stairs--are the residuals of dreams.

I had been there before, in a dream. I remembered being there before I ever was.

The fifth dimension is tricky, and it's all the more because we're only 3-D creatures, incapable of anything but small flashes of clarity at random, meaningless intervals. Most of the time, they come and go, and they end up being nothing but a good dream, something that couldn't or wouldn't ever happen, and you file it away with all the other good, improbable dreams.

But maybe it will happen. Or if it doesn't, then it did on some plane of time, when you chose another path. Maybe what you're dreaming is glimpses of a future--not the future--that exists somewhere. Maybe they're gifts from the past versions of yourself, put there to guide you along to what you're supposed to do with this one.

Normal deja vu at places I've been to before happens frequently. But this--this is rare for me. All these things are happening in a positive feedback loop that I no longer have the power to stop. I suppose if this were the wrong way to go, it'd be too late now to change it. And that's something that I'm going to go ahead and thank God for, because if I had to think about it and make every step meticulously, then none of it would have ever happened.

It looks like I might be lighting that fire under my ass way quicker than I originally anticipated. Every few minutes, I feel a door opening somewhere that, only 48 hours ago, was locked with fear and doubt. I've none of that any longer. Everything will happen, and is happening, quicker than I have time to think about. I think I trust it.