A Person Currently Known as Catherine

[Archivists note: Excerpt from the writings of “Eternal Cathy”, sometimes referred to as “Many Cathys”. Despite being only 19 years old, the self-coined “person currently known as Catherine” is fluent in over 87 languages, can adeptly play nearly every musical instrument known to man, and has memorized the entire Bible, among other religious texts. She has not monetized her story in any way, reportedly even refusing a lucrative book deal from a big five publisher, and a life rights deal from Paramount Pictures.]

I’ve been lost in other minds for about a thousand years now, give or take a century.

It all started with an accident, or at least that’s where I think it started. I’d been driving the Coquihalla on a rainy Thursday night, when my car hydroplaned off the road. The last thing I remember from that life was tumbling down a rocky slope, face pressed into the rubbery stink of an airbag. 

I woke inside an ambulance. But I wasn’t lying on a gurney, I was behind the wheel. Now, I was a paramedic, and I struggled to remember my life before. Fragments of that miserable existence rattled in my skull like the echoes of a bad acid trip. I’d been a derelict drifter, a strung-out drug addict hauling cocaine from Vancouver to Penticton. Can’t remember what my name had been, maybe Kevin, maybe Kyle. Let’s go with Kevin. Dad killed Mom when I was five, shotgun blast to the back of the neck. Left her body on the living room couch till it started to stink so bad the neighbours complained. I’d been hiding under my bed for three days when the cops found me. Things only seemed to get worse after that. I stopped trying to remember Kevin’s life. I focused on driving. I was a paramedic now, this was my job, whatever happened before didn’t matter anymore. My name was Wyatt Reid, and I was 37 years old. 

The attending asked if I was okay, and I said I was fine, just had a migraine. She told me to keep my eyes on the road. The first few days of my second life felt strange, like I was a former spirit of myself, along for the ride in another person’s mind. Maybe all the drugs had finally short-circuited my brain. 

You’d think I’d be terrified, in shock, trying to make sense of it, but I figured it was easier to run with the program. This seemed a better life than what I had before. Wyatt’s parents were still alive. They had a nice house in Vernon and they didn’t seem the type to shoot each other during a drug-fueled bender. 

I settled in more by day three, convinced myself the foggy echoes of my past life were only paranoid delusions brought on by lack of sleep and stress. On day five or six, I fully embraced who I now believed I’d always been: Wyatt Reid, 37 year old paramedic living in a one bedroom apartment in Penticton. Wyatt Reid who’d found a junkie named Kevin or Kyle dead in a crumpled car off the Coquihalla.

Wyatt was 43 years old when he died. I don’t know how, because it happened in my sleep. Maybe an aneurysm, maybe a carbon monoxide leak. 

Whatever the cause of death, this time I woke up in the mind of a pigeon. My thoughtstream came in chittering coos. My pigeon brain could barely comprehend most of the world. Humans were like strange eldritch gods, buildings impossible superstructures. At the time, none of it made a lick of sense. I just wanted food.

I spent most of my pigeon-brained existence in a city park waiting for one particular old man to shuffle up on his walker, plop down on a bench, and scatter bird seed like manna from heaven. He may as well have been god himself. And the day the old man stopped showing up, our pigeon congregation fell into chaos. Can’t remember much after that, save for the way I died. A house cat snagged me by the neck and severed my spinal cord. Thank god I couldn’t feel anything as it ate me alive. 

I’ve lived far too many lives since then, mostly human. Always waking in roughly the same geographical location, but sometimes in the past, sometimes in the present, sometimes in the future. The earliest I’ve experienced is 1924, and the latest 2036. Things get pretty rough around 2035. Buckle up. 

I’ve been the mayor of Kelowna, I’ve been a firefighter, a piano teacher, a fish, a dog, and one time a barely sentient ponderosa that burned up in a wildfire. Yes, trees experience things, but they aren’t exactly self-aware. Sentience is a spectrum. 

I’m tired. I’ve died at least a hundred times now, and it turns out dying is kind of miserable. Not something you want to go through more than once. And the worst part is, I’m never the same person, not inside. Sure, there’s some small part of me that remains constant, but every time I die, I wake up only to be enslaved by whatever instincts the next mind has. I’ve been a peace-loving botanist, a murderous psychopath, and everything in between. I still hold all those memories and guilt and lack of guilt. Like I’m all these different beings at the same time.

Today, I go by Catherine, 19 years old. I was born in Prince George to two loving parents. I ran away on Catherine’s 8th birthday. I’m up in the Yukon now, living off the grid. My goal is to get as far away from other minds as possible, see if that finally puts an end to the cycle. Here’s hoping this is my last entry. 

[Archivists note: We are currently tracking down more pages from Catherine’s writings, expect an update in the future.]