I am having some difficulties dealing with something. I have had a number of experiences where I have known that certain things would happen before did. They include most of the big events in my life, but also smaller things in which I have had some emotional involvement, even though they have less of an impact on my life. Some of these experiences have taken the form of dreams, and my perspective of the events that I see in these dreams is always the same as it is when they actually occur. Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks I had a dream that my dad called me into the lounge to watch the news and there was something on the TV that I couldn't really make sense of - then a few days later he called me through to watch as the first reports were coming through, and after a while I recognized the image of the Pentagon on fire as being what I saw. I had a dream that a relative came to tell me something terrible and that I was laying in bed at the time. I dismissed it because approaching my bed from the direction that she did is impossible, but then I went into hospital, and she came to tell me awful news. But even though living through things twice is weird, I can live with it. It is the other ways in which I know what is going to happen that trouble me.
Usually the way it happens is that I will be thinking about something, and then I will know something will happen. It's like intuition on overdrive. Sometimes it is as simple as the outcome of a football match that I am watching, which then ruins the rest of the match for me because it feels like I am watching a recording of a game that someone has already told me the score of, but most often it is personal things. I once knew that someone who at the time was a friend of a friend would bid and win a lot that I had just been reading on ebay. The feeling was just so strong and so certain. I knew that someone I was involved with for a short time would buy me three specific gifts - and I knew it right from the beginning. These things always feel like the truth, and they are unalterable. Sometimes, like the ebay experience, they concern things that are already in motion, and those I can put down to intuition, but when it is far in advance I can't. I knew before I left for the interview for the first job I had that I would be offered the job, and I have since had to fill in applications for jobs knowing that I would be unsuccessful. I have known, every time I have met her boyfriends for the first time, the outcome of my friend's relationships. Now this is fine, because she is engaged and I can finally be happy to be right, but it was horrible knowing each time from one meeting that her others would fail.
Usually, when I know something in advance, it is a matter of days - I knew Argentina would not win against Germany in the 2006 World Cup a few days before the match, but I knew something too personal to discuss here four years in advance. I don't know how to deal with these things any more. To deal with the easier story, I was supporting Argentina and very excited about the match. The instant I knew that they would not win all of my enthusiasm for the game vanished and after the game ended a draw and Germany progressed via the penalty shootout I started to wonder about the future. You would assume that the outcome of a sporting event could not be determined in advance (assuming no money exchanges hands), but it already felt true that Argentina would not win. No other outcome was possible. It was absolutely certain. Does that then mean that eleven of the men who took the field that day had no control over their fate? That destiny had determined they wouldn't win and no skill on their part could change that? I don't know at what point a thing becomes inevitable, but I think that is the point at which I know it will happen.
It is so hard, even for people who know me well, to understand how it feels to know what will happen. One time, I knew something would happen if my friends pursued a certain course of action, and I tried to tell them, but they dismissed it as fear. I suppose if they hadn't dismissed it as fear then they would not have taken that course, and if the future did not contain that course of action then I would not have seen that future, because it wouldn't exist to be seen, so there would have been nothing for me to warn them of, and it would still have happened anyway, which means there was something for me to see. I get a headache just thinking about it. Worse than that, what this means is that I know something will happen, and have no choice but to watch it happen with no chance of changing it. Okay, so occasionally I wouldn't want to change it because it is something good, but usually it is bad, and it makes me feel terrible. I rarely have any hope because of it.
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