Between Déjà vu and Destiny

I’ve been having a weird sensation recently, odd enough that I relate it to déjà-vu, but it’s entirely different. It’s quite a good feeling, although when I’ve had it over the last week or so (several times) I’ve sometimes been physically uncomfortable. I’ve been trying to beat off headaches, and my stomach has been wonky, and a few other mild things that are usually forgotten if they don’t make it into a daily journal or something. But then this feeling happens, and it’s pleasant.

I can only describe it as like a recognition, as if I’ve done well and followed my destiny. I don’t actually believe in “destiny” as such, that everything we do is preordained. That requires such a leap into pseudo-science and philosophy that I can’t quite get there. It’s just so very unlikely that I would ever have found myself in the place that I find myself. Here I am, with a partner who grew up thousands of miles from where I was born and spent my early life. I’m doing a job which is also far, far away from my origins, and I speak a language (French) that I didn’t grow up with. The odd paths, bits of courage and various half-thought-out reasons that got me from southern Indiana to Switzerland are just too haphazard to contemplate. And yet I feel that I’m in the right place sometimes, and this feeling comes from some childhood memory, or feeling. What might I have read, what images might I have seen?

My grandmother and her twin sister went on the European tour that young women of that era sometimes did, in between the world wars. They came back with souvenirs, and I know that I had images of Switzerland in a small, plastic house that I would play with. I looked in through a window, I pushed on the chimney, the slide would change to another Swiss scene; it was a typical, tacky touristy souvenir. But to go from there to have a feeling that “this is where I’m supposed to be” is a stretch.

So no explanation, just odd feelings sometimes. I think it means that I’m happy. I’m in one of those “ellipsis” parts of life, one of those “five years later…” parts, where my life are those three little dots. In any case, I’m happy. I have good friends, I love my partner and my job. I love where I live. All is good. And I have Foro.