Chapter I
I
How to tell if I am a reincarn
How to know if you are a reincarnated
Am I reincarnated?
How to know if I am reincarnated
How to tell if you are a reincarnation
She scanned the results and scrolled down to Quora and Reddit.
Some users claimed to have memories that couldn’t have belonged to them—a child recalling how he liked to drive, a woman who remembered being a nurse in World War II, a man unable to shake the sense that he had been stabbed in a previous life.
She did her best to suspend her disbelief; she wanted so dearly to reason with those individuals—a child could conflate reality and fiction, as could an adult.
The subconscious often played tricks. But she was hardly in a position to doubt their experiences.
She didn’t have any memories of being Monife. Sometimes she had the uncomfortable sense of déjà vu, but didn’t everyone? She exited the sites and read a few related articles—recurring dreams, birthmarks, physical and personality similarities. But what did that really prove?
Sango rested at her feet whilst she swiped the screen of her iPad. “What can I do to get it to stop, Sango?” she asked, and then she remembered that Sango was likely making the same connection her family made. He had, after all, been Mo’s dog.
She sighed; she was being drawn back into the madness. As a child, she had taken it for granted that she was Monife, and then she had left for boarding school and gotten some perspective. But these days, having moved back home, she felt like her sense of self was slipping.
Even if she had the exact same DNA as Monife, even if she was somehow a clone of the dead woman, wouldn’t epigenetics come into play? But then there was no avoiding the fact that she was living in the same environment as her aunt, surrounded by the same three women…
She came across a comment on a blog about epigenetics and generational trauma, which wasn’t on her bingo card for the day but which sent her down a rabbit hole.
What if the trauma of losing the love, stability and social standing that came with marriage had left epigenetic markers on generation after generation of the Falodun women?
What if the neurons in their brains were triggering her mother, grandmother and grand-aunt to select the wrong partner, and that was the “curse”?
Her phone vibrated. Zubby had tagged her in an Instagram post. It was a picture of her threading her hair. You could only see her profile and he hadn’t written a caption, but it made her smile. She opened her WhatsApp chat and messaged him:
Are you soft launching me Z?
Depends.
On?
If I get brownie points for soft launching you.
You get all the brownie points.
Then I was soft launching you.
LOL.
What are you doing?
She looked at her searches.
Nothing.
Come over.