Errant Timeline

[ehowton]

Errant Timeline is based on a true story. I was laying in bed reading, doomscrolling, whatever - when something minor triggered a memory - and what should've been an inconsequential musing turned into a full sensory experience which left me in tears. I was immediately thrust into not only the recollection of an experience, but all the warmth, happiness, and emotion surrounding it. It lasted only a moment but I felt like I had lived a lifetime in that fraction of a second. Worse still was its passing which brought me forcibly back into a present in which feeling that hopeful, happy, and secure contrasted greatly with my current reality. It was devastating, much like Future Past, the dream I had in May. That's where this song originated :(

Echoes of memories, static in the dark
Tiny flashes firing, like lightning through the heart
Most days they're just fragments, ghosts without a name
But every now and then, they hit exactly the same

A scent/A sound/A passing face
A signal through the haze
And suddenly I'm standing
Inside forgotten days

I learned to force them under
Push them back below
Because if I let them linger

They grow...

I'm living in an errant timeline
You crash into my head again
I'm living in the wrong universe
I'm somewhere that has never been

Back in your arms
Back in your light
Back in a world
That ended overnight

I'm living in an errant timeline
I blink and you're with me again

Then you're gone

Lying half asleep one evening, laughing at some old cliché
Something stupid/Something random, Should've faded right away
Instead it opened up a doorway like a fault line in my mind
And I got ripped from this reality into another timeline

The kind where you were still beside me
The kind where nothing fell apart
The kind where every road I traveled
Didn't lead me back to dark

It only lasts a moment
But God, it feels so real
Every buried circuit
Still remembers how I feel

I'm living n the wrong universe
You crash into my head again
I'm living in an errant timeline
I'm somewhere that has never been

Back in your laugh
Back in your eyes
Back in a future
That never arrived

I'm living in the wrong universe
I blink and you're with me again

Then you're gone

Maybe I'm guilty too? Maybe that's part of this
I wrote these songs to process pain, to survive what I would miss
The guilt arrived much later, listening back through all the years
Finding pieces of myself hidden underneath the tears
At least I can admit it, at least I can face the flame
I never blamed you for my wounds, I only called them by their name

I'm living in an errant timeline
We're all just trying to survive

I'm living in the wrong universe
Trying not to keep something alive

Holding space for your storms
While weathering my own
Trying to make peace
With what I'll never know

I'm living in an errant timeline
Hoping to find my way in a universe without you

The memory fades
The signal dies
The timeline closes
And I return

...To mine.