had a weird experience at the supermarket today

i went to this huge supermarket today that reminded me of the woolies i lived near as a kid. it always seemed so huge, and i just remembered why. sometimes when i went there, there was just. an extra aisle. like the store had expanded. and then the next time i went, it was gone.

i only saw it maybe one in ten times i went there, but there was definitely an extra aisle between the toiletries and plasticware/cookware aisles. a lot of the stuff there wasn’t consistent but there was always a shelf full of of cards, the kind you write in. so one day, i needed to buy a card for mother’s day, and that day the weird aisle was there, so i went looking there and all of the ones on that shelf were already written in. addressed to and written by people i had never even heard of. it freaked me out! i called staff over to ask but they wouldn’t even look at the aisle let alone walk down there, and yet, i could tell that they knew. at the time i thought they thought i was stupid, but now i can tell they were doing the best to not acknowledge something they didn’t understand.

so. i went and bought a normal, not pre-written-in card that time, but whenever i saw that aisle again i went and checked everything there. most things i saw there was pre-owned in some way. when pots and pans showed up, they had scratch marks. that kind of thing. sometimes appliances, sometimes already opened food… but it was odd. most of the time, if something had a date on it, like an expiry or copyright date, it could be anywhere from a year ago to a few decades in the future, and it was generally the second one. and then one day, there was stationary in that aisle. including dairies. so what else could i do but buy them?

well, buy the ones that would actually scan, and shoplift the rest. look i couldn’t pay for the spooky future books legitimately what else was i meant to do?

when i got home i poured over them, hoping i could spoil myself on the future somehow, but a lot of it was boring. weirdly enough, one of them was the diary of a trans woman, 15 years in the future. it took me a long time to crack my egg… but that diary definitely helped. which is actually why i started writing my own journal, to be honest. sometimes i doubt whether that aisle was even real but some small part of me hoped that whatever i wrote would end up there and help someone realise that they’re trans.

well. my mum was cleaning out our old house before she moved, and said she found a diary of mine. she sent it to my apartment. i opened it up and sure enough, there was my name.

and then i read the contents, and i realised. it was one of the diaries i’d bought. as a child i’d been reading my future diary and i never even knew.

i kept flipping through the pages. i got to yesterday’s date. i turned the page. there was today. i turned the page. there was tomorrow. i skimmed the rest. it went on for another year. so today i went and burned it. went to a campground near the bush, tore it to pieces, burned it in a fire pit. the idea of my future being written down, even if it was some alternate timeline… i dont want to see that ever again. i dont want it to exist at all.

on the way back, i entered my local woolies to get a drink. i meant to be quick, just in and out, but i wasn’t. i had to look, of course. and if i hadn’t looked i wouldn’t have known that my local woolies had an extra isle.

full of cards.

and full of diaries.