ADULTING
Conversations With My Selves
The ghosts and skeletons that we carry
I found myself awoke again in this ungodly hour. With 16 stories above the ground and city lights reflected in my window, a thought crossed my head.
Maybe, change is a series of murders you commit to yourself over and over again. Perhaps, there’s a hint of lie in the line: “you only live once, because I felt I’ve died so many times in this life.”
Tell me. How much death is left before I actually die?
My past is an endless massacre of all the selves that I once was. It’s a dumpsite for my rotting dreams and salvaged memories. Once in a while, I visit it. I collect pieces of myself there and put them in their little caskets. Then, I bury and mourn for them.
It’s funny. A murderer mourning for the murdered.
Anyhow, I’m visiting their graveyards today — that is to say, I’m visiting the cemetery of my selves.
Today, I’m visiting the tombstone of my childhood.
As a child, my sense of self took place in dark nooks and crannies where who I am is permissible. It took place in moments of invisibility. Beyond that, every inch of my body was merely a fancy figurine of their hopes and expectations. Beyond that, I was an empty shell unworthy of their devotion.
There was nothing to anchor myself into but them.
The way I dress, the way I sit and cross my legs, the way I talk to other people, the way I take up my space — everything is their way.
“Don’t do that. You’ll embarrass us.”, they say.
Tell me. Did I really exist back then?
If I did, then my first murder meant killing my parents inside me. If I did, then my first murder took place when I left home.
I left home, that is to say, I left a ten-year-old dining table. I left both happy-together family meals and hundred-voltage-of-silence dinners. I left dusty and awkwardly captured photos. I left dog-scratched doors and Crayola-vandalized walls. I left tear-stained sheets and broken chairs.
I left the sink where my father used to yell at me for my clumsy washing methods. I left the room where I used to cry silently for days. I was so silent no one noticed.
I left home but did I really leave?
I learned that you could leave a place but not its memories and feelings. I left home but I never got to leave its sadness. I imagine how I probably folded sadness under all my clothes when I left for college. But I don’t need to fold and carry it. It’s inside me all along.
Sadness never leaves and the mourning never stops. The places where we once were are far away, the moments already grainy in our mind, but somehow the past never leaves us.
Somehow, the day my mother ranted to us about how she could be traveling somewhere and enjoying her life if not for us, continues to hurt me.
I learned that we couldn’t shoo our past away. It’s meant to haunt us. Our past lives with us in the present. We can go anywhere but we will never escape ourselves. We are meant to cross the street, mundanely drink our coffee, and talk to strangers — all while being haunted by ourselves, each with their own flavor of sadness and guilt.
