Everything seems familiar, but it’s as if I’m viewing it through a mirror of a different life. A different version of me who managed to slip through the cracks of my consciousness, and is now just a vague memory pieced together by the musings of a childhood life my family recounts with perfect smiles on their faces. I throw up a mask of my own creation, pretending I remember, pretending I’m not just a ghost of my former self, smiling along and trying to hide the cracks so they don’t see.
Everything seems to be mocking me, singing melodies I can no longer hear, whispering secrets I can no longer pick up on. The glaring purple walls of my childhood bedroom laugh at me, turning their once loving embrace into a sinking pit of despair, like they’re slowly closing in on me until I can’t breathe, until I can’t leave. The bookshelf beneath the window is covered in dust, holding hostage stories I can no longer remember, stories that no longer feel welcoming. I can’t recall the long summer days where I would turn the pages and inhale the words, letting their sweet scent transport me to new dimensions. Now, they just feel like poison, giving me the sensation of fake nostalgia, taunting me from beneath the layers of hardcover bindings. A corkboard hangs on the wall, images and scraps of paper I had pinned up a lifetime ago and never taken down, full of smiles and that childhood pride of displaying what mattered most to me. A newspaper interview from a local circus I can’t remember going to. A poster of my younger self’s favorite singer haunted with the feelings of a concert I can’t remember attending. Drawings and inside jokes I no longer have access to, lost in the deep recesses of my mind. Now just a dust coated reminder of what once was.
Everything seems distant, like it’s just out of reach and no matter how hard I try I can never grasp on. I wander through the halls, my hands brushing against the freshly dried layer of paint. I know this place; I’ve been here before, I’ve lived here before, I’ve laughed here before, I’ve cried here before, but it’s like I’ve never existed here at all. My face smiles down at me from up on the wall, my tiny arms clutching my younger brothers, looking past the camera towards my mom on the other end. I was carefree then. I don’t know what that’s like anymore. I don’t recognize the little girl in the photo. How could that be me? I don’t look like her anymore, I don’t feel like her anymore. I’ve lost sight of her in the changing tides of my brain, tossing her aside to fend for herself in the unforgiving waters. I know nothing of that time, I feel nothing of that time.
Everything seems broken, frozen in time. Everytime I come back here it’s the same. I’m hit with a sense that something’s wrong, that I shouldn’t be here. It’s like the house wants me to leave, and I want to obey. I want to leave it all behind, to not be hit with the sense like I’ve done something wrong, to be hit with the sense that I don’t belong here; not really, not anymore. The folder on my laptop adds to the discomfort. I have countless photos and videos spanning the years I spent here, making up the only “memories” I do have, contributing to the stories that I tell to strangers to convince them of the childhood I experienced. My elementary school artwork decorates the basement walls, colorful bursts of unrestrained artistic expression seeps through the cardstock. I lived with reckless abandon then, laughing with my friends on the schoolyard and daydreaming of the future. I guess that’s what I have in common with my younger self, looking towards what comes next, where my path will take me in my next steps. I briefly smile but it doesn’t last as I glance at the granite desktop behind me. Yet another place where I have no recollection of, a room that feels eerily familiar yet foreign at the same time. It’s like a detachment from reality, this room, this whole house, warping me into its confusing timeline trying to trap me and never let me go. I almost let it. I wander outside and breathe in the summer air from the edge of the driveway. In front of me, a dirt road where I guess I learned how to ride my bike, and where I walked my dog for the very first time. Now it just looks like a collection of broken past crushed into the earth, worn down by time.
Everything seems lost, or maybe that’s just me.
