Who DOESN'T love uncomfortable, freaky coincidences?

I hope you all are ready for some seriously X-Files/Alternate Universe Mayhem realness, because I'm gonna serve you some.

Just call me Spooky Mulder.
Just kidding. I want to be Scully.

So, once upon another time in my life, as I'm sure you all remember, I was 

arried-may

which I don't like to talk about, mostly. Because it's uncomfortable, and people usually are like "What? Really? BUT YOU ARE SUCH A YOUNG HUMAN."

Although, not coming clean about it quickly can result in some uncomfortable situations where (usually well-meaning older) people are like "you're such a beautiful young woman! Didn't you meet anyone in college who wanted to wife you up, like, ASAP?"

Paraphrasing, but that definitely did happen, and I was like "haaaaaa....uh, well..."

That's not the point of this story, although that incident does deserve its own blogpost. And it may well get one.

Scratch that. It WILL get one. 

I digress. I came into class about a week ago to find that we had a substitute, who, I had noticed from discussions on our class Facebook group, happened to have the same name as The Ex. Which was a little weird, and sent me into an irrational panic spiral that somehow the person who was subbing for our class actually WAS The Ex. And I promptly talked myself out of it because seriously The Ex is not in this industry. Paranoia is fun!! 

I showed up to class, a bit off-put by the name, which totally wasn't his fault, and it turned out he was a very personable and pleasant individual, recently engaged; with a knack for making a classroom feel at ease. 

But then...THEN. 

One of my classmates knew his fiancee, and she was like, "Hey! How's Hillary doing?"

I have never tried so hard to stop myself from whipping around like a character in a Looney Tunes cartoon to look at her and say "WHAT DID YOU SAY HER NAME WAS?"

I thought maybe I'd misheard, but no. My classmate mentioned this person who shares my name several more times over the course of the lesson, and every time I jumped like I was getting hit with a low-grade electric shock. I mean, Hilary is a fairly common name, but it's not THAT common. And to have this Hillary be engaged to a person with the SAME NAME as The Ex? The chances are (and I've done the math) slim to none. 

The longer I was sitting there, the weirder the thoughts got.

"Maybe they were the couple with those names who were meant to work out, and the Grand Scheme of Things just got its wires crossed--"

"Maybe I'm living in a weird fragmented universe where somehow there's a copy of me living in this same world who is living the life that I almost had and will be happy--"

"Maybe Loki, God of Tricks, has decided that my life is far too tame and needs more unbearable coincidences."

"IT WAS ALIENS, WASN'T IT. THE ALIENS HAVE A VENDETTA AGAINST ME." 

When in doubt.

There have been times in my life where I half-wonder how close I'm dancing to the border of insanity, and being in that room at that moment was one of them.  So as I was leaving, I had to ask--

"So. Your fiancee. Does she spell her name with one L, or two?"

His answer--two--soothed my nerves. But only a little. 

He subbed for our class again this week. People still kept asking about Hillary. Even joked about asking her to bring pizza to class. Which probably would have created a rupture in the very fabric of space and time. 

It's weird, right? 

It's still weird.