Paper Dinosaurs
By: Lauren Andrikanich
I’m enamored with the idea of life being cyclical. When I’m home over winter break, I meet up with a third of my graduating class (and that’s barely an exaggeration, given my graduating class struggled to make it into the triple digits). I’m bad at getting things right the first time. I’d never do high school again, but I love to rewrite my time there, to get coffee with my old classmates and beg them to remember me differently: prettier, sweeter, smarter. I’m better now, love me.
I meet up for coffee with the boy from my social bubble in 2021. We go to the same cafe we used to, sit in the same corner, and I remember that I chose him when we could only see a limited number of people. I order the same matcha while Christian rock blares in the background, and remember a little too late that he doesn’t actually like coffee, but he comes here because I like it. He orders a smoothie, just like I usually suggest when I remember he doesn’t like coffee. We come here because it’s familiar. I can’t remember why we stopped talking last time, but I have vague thoughts about getting it right this time, about being the kind of friend that he needs. He comes back to mine for a drink. We watch a movie I rave about, go through the clothes I thrifted that day. I’m loud and somewhat squirmy and it feels like I messed up this second chance I’ve gotten, that I forgot to be different this time around.
I’ll do it better next time, while I’m driving out of Lakewood after seeing the same friend perform at the same venue with the same band as last year. Life is cyclical. There will be other coffee shops and concerts and everyone will adore me next time. I’ll be cooler. I’ll be prettier. I’ll wear a cuter outfit. I devalue myself in a desperate attempt to be clean of the awkwardness of yesterday. I catalog every social mishap and misspoken word and promise myself it’ll play out differently when life comes around again. Next time, I’ll be prepared for the bend.
The girl I knew from thirteen to sixteen is getting divorced. We haven’t earnestly spoken since her wedding, and I don’t know what to say to her. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t fantasized about doing it over, about making sure we still knew each other during all the years we didn’t. If things are really cyclical, when she asks me if she should marry him this time around, I’ll tell her not to. It’s like it’s 2015 again. It’s like it’s junior year of high school. It’s like it’s a cold, empty park sometime in 2021. It’s like it’s February of last year and all of these timelines are coming together to give me another shot at being kinder and snarkier and better and I am failing at it. I’m more defensive and too attached, simultaneously. I’m a caricature of a girl who used to love openly. I’m not as good as I was at nineteen or sixteen or thirteen. Life is cyclical, maybe, but I’m wondering how many tries it’ll give me before it’s determined I’m out of lives and strikes and chances.
I had a dream last night about dinosaurs, drawn as cartoons and roaming paper cutouts of trees. I saw a TikTok about how Earth will persist long past the extinction of humans. That, in however many billions of years, every trace of everything I demanded perfection from will be incinerated. I found that comforting. I wonder what will come after us. I wonder if they’ll commit the same atrocities. I wonder if the Earth will punish us for what we did. I think about the afterlife and how I hope they can’t see us, mostly to save myself the embarrassment. I don’t want to see what comes after, I don’t think– in this life, on this Earth.
I’m thrilled by the nonlinear route of it all, if only so I can hold onto the blind belief that the Earth will purge itself and we’ll get it right next time.