My baby pictures matter to me as much as my life does, no matter how shitty and uneventful it is: somehow these pictures are the only tangible things that I could hold on to if the intangible ones can’t be trusted a.k.a. relationships and other principles I hold dear.
One thing lead to another and I just found those photo albums in the dump in my grandmother’s house. Things happened and harsh words were dropped, but not by me. But whatever, my photos are there, deep in the trash along with some withered leaves and this foul liquid.
I had a really troubled (if not bad) childhood. I don’t remember something good or surprising that happened to me during that time, except for those times I pretended that things around me were doing fine. I was 4 and I was pretending to not feel uncomfortable and dissatisfied with my early life. I don’t even remember feeling full of love and excitement over things; it’s always that unspoken feeling inside me where I always expected the worse, because I thought things worked like that, at my age.
“Everything would be better when I grow older, anyway,” I’d say to myself. But I was wrong. It’s like every woe I had as a child is slowly coming back to me and it’s only now that I got the chance to sob over it. Those feelings I repressed as a child never got away. It just grew bigger and bigger and formed this hollow void in my chest I’m forced to take care of. Otherwise I’d explode and… do unspeakable things. To myself.
I don’t know what to with this gaping hole in me, aside from listen to the whole “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” record by Bright Eyes and cry for the next hour. It’s been going on for three days now and I don’t really mind. I could do this for a living.
Some years ago, my maternal grandmother gave away my Barbie dolls to some kid (to a cousin I have no idea existed) because apparently she needed some toys. It hit me really hard because those dolls and I shared something when I was a little girl. Camaraderie? Secrets? I don’t know, but everyone of us was a child, too. I think we all got to a point where we kept something dear to us, something that reminded us of the past, bad or good. Even my hello kitty plushie collection was gone. I think every toy I had when I was a child is now some kid’s possession.
I’m not the materialistic type. I never was. But knowing this piece of information and not being able to unlearn or unremember it, to know that I don’t have those anymore, sends me on a chilly and agonizing realization that I may be no one. I’m just another useless speck. And I hope you don’t ever, in your life, feel that way, because it’s scary and it eats you alive.
Some of the pictures got ruined because of the rain; the water might have seeped through the walls and the dingy roof of this room in my grandmother’s house. And I guess that’s just the universe reminding me how insignificant I am. The people who threw it are just making a point.
These events somehow clicked something inside me that I never felt or heard of. And every time I get reminded of how this could haunt me for the rest of my life, a piece of me just sloughs off somewhere deeper where I couldn’t find it anymore. Is it possible to lose yourself inside yourself?
I feel like I’m in this episode of a coming-of-age drama where my character just stares at an empty space. And my head would slightly turn to the sound of the word “mother.” And I’m slowly sinking to depression and I don’t know if I should tell anyone about this. Thank god for UST’s free therapies.
I didn’t expect for it to be like this: triggered by pictures and toys.
I’ll fight like hell to hide that I’m giving up.
