I'm Not Sure I've Always Existed
It’s strange, the feeling of not knowing whether or not you really existed in moments other people can prove, definitively, that you did.
In 2002… or 2001… or 2000 (I honestly do not know), I went to Ireland on a class trip. Well, a choir trip. I remember I went on this trip for a few reasons:
My then boyfriend made me a mixed CD and gave it to me the night before I left, on the beach, after sunset, when we were looking at the stars reflecting off the lake. The closing song on the CD was Incubus’ “Wish You Were Here”, the opening line of which is, “I dig my toes into the sand/ the Ocean looks like a thousand diamonds/strewn across a blue blanket.”
I was in the middle of one of the worst times in my eating disorder history. I know this because I used the trip as an opportunity to not eat at all. For Lent the Spring before I decided to “give up all animal products and byproducts.” But really, I meant I was only eating high fiber cereals and some vegetables, if at all. So much of the food on this trip had meat, butter, eggs, and cheese, that it was easy to lose 10lbs before I got home.
But, I don’t really remember the trip. I remember Pizza Hut with sheep’s milk cheese. I remember singing in a big, old church. I know, because I’ve seen the pictures, that we went to Stonehenge. I remember feeling like a third wheel with my two best friends. I remember emotions. Sheep’s milk cheese on pizza made me feel “weird”. I was missing my boyfriend and jealous of my friends being there with their significant others. But, so much of what I remember feels like a vivid dream, slowly fading with the day, blurrier and less discernible the longer I’ve been awake.
This isn’t uncommon. A friend sent me a picture of us from our youth, recently, that I didn’t even recognize. She asked me if I remembered what all we “fought with in the epic battle. Was it molasses? Hay? Were there bags of flour?” I’m staring at this picture. At some younger version of me. It seems like it could be possible. I kind of remember that shirt. But, I don’t remember battling with her. I don’t even remember doing anything with her outside of school. We weren’t in the same extracurriculars, so when would we have even taken this picture together? She says, “We were at Spring Hill camp.” And there is it. Yes, I went to that camp. I had been going since I was probably 10 with a friend who convinced me that even those it was based in Christianity it wasn’t your typical “Jesus camp.” I guess, eventually, I invited this friend to go with me? I don’t remember that. I don’t remember that summer.
It’s hard to even place it on the timeline of life events. It seems like it would have to have been before Ireland. I look younger. My hair in Ireland pictures is straight and I’m very tan. My hair in this one is pulled back, but curly. Maybe even in two small braids. I have braces, but that’s not a good measure, since I had them put on in second grade. I’m guessing I’m 12, 13 maybe? I just don’t know for sure. I just don’t remember that summer.
The ironic thing about this is that I actually have a superior memory. Ask me what I was wearing the day I asked my partner out on our first date (my favorite dark jeans and a t-shirt from HRC (yeah, I know)). Ask me what I wore to my first day of grad school (my then boyfriend’s University of Michigan sweatshirt, two sizes too big, and those same pair of jeans). Ask me about all the small details of the arrangement of my first college dorm, including the decorations. I actually remember what every single one of my college rooms (all 5) looked like. I can recall whole portions of conversations from road trips from a decade ago. I can tell you the exact year pretty much any random song from 1996-2010 came out. It’s not hard. I have eidetic memory. My memories are like movies. Clear. Focused. Repeating on reels. If I think hard enough, I can recall just about anything.
Except for most things that happened between the day after the last day of second grade and my 16th birthday (both of which I remember with great, horrifying detail). Perhaps one of my first experiences with trauma outside of my home life, on the day after the last day of second grade a teacher yelled at me as I was trying to find some pictures that I had left in my desk. She told me I was worthless, or something very close. I, actually, if I’m being honest, don’t remember the encounter. But I do remember walking out of the west doors, toward my mom in the family car, crying. I also remember my mom being really, really mad at my teacher. My 16th birthday I spent upset and frustrated at my friends. I don’t know why. They all showed up for me. I had a small cake. Maybe my parents had been fighting earlier in the day? Maybe it was because I felt compelled to people-please, like I always do, and we watched Thir13en Ghosts instead of, literally, anything else. I hate horror movies. Especially ghost ones. But I suppose this is what happens when you’ve been spending the last decade living for everyone else but yourself. Trying to make sure people don’t get mad at you. Or leave you.
As far as I’m concerned, though, the rest of my childhood--the time from 8-16--could never have happened. I know that pictures exist, but that doesn’t mean they’re of me, per se. This could be like AI. I could just be Haley Joel Osment’s robot clone, produced to approximate feelings about as human as possible, not the real Haley Joel Osment, the real human boy whose parents remade him after he died. Memories implanted into my computer brain to simulate a real existence. A time before death. A rebirth, but from an older age. This might explain why it’s hard for me to cry. Why other people’s sadness produces what feels like sharp noises between my ears. Why things seem fuzzy. Why I have a hard time distinguishing dreams from reality. Why my nightmares lately have been odd convergences of all my most traumatic life experiences, meshed into one horrible three-hour movie that I’m trapped in and no one will let me leave before credits screen goes blue. The last one involved being ridiculed, teased, put down, and ignored after being “too much” at a party with friends. Too loud. Too opinionated. Too inconvenient. I woke up defeated, alone, and sick to my stomach.
It is, indeed, a very strange feeling… that you could or could not have existed prior to your 16th birthday. That you’ve spent so much time dedicated to making yourself as small as possible that you shrunk yourself out of existence. When your photographic memory can’t recall the memories from the photographs. It’s unnerving, really. To not know what happened to make you forget. To have to move forward in time, with a dark black hole lingering behind. I’m afraid of what I might discover if I turn around. If I stare long enough into the void. I’m afraid of who I might see. How it might change me. My therapist asks me, “What’s the worst that can happen?” And I think, probably, remembering the trauma that made me forget. Having to see what is hidden in the shadows. Having to come to terms with what I’ve been through. Having to see faces--my own and others--that will haunt my nightmares.
What’s the worst that can happen? I could fall into the void and never return.