time

Growing up is learning that all of those classmates you had in high school are now considered friends. Growing up is a process of consolidation. The world is full of strangers, and we are clinging for any inkling of familiarity, even one as tenuous as spending four years together in your teens and witnessing each other’s traumas. Closeness is defined by proximity, and proximity is interchangeable. Proximate could be three stops away on the F-train, and distance could be the difference of living in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

I am reminded that I am the same person as I was in the past but also so different. We have come so far, but we always revisit that places we came from. That’s like what coming back during Thanksgiving represents. I am so different from how I was the past, but also the self that I am now seems so inevitable. As much as I’d like to believe that I had agency at each step along the way, it seems that I am far from that. I am able to change my state of mind depending on what medication on what dosage I am using. Now that I am not on any medication and returning to my childhood bedroom, I am reminded how I felt all those years ago, when I had such inspiration to write, when I had realizations about the world.

People say you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, which I don’t for the most part, but I truly emerged from all of this significantly different from how I was in the past. It seems like the people around me don’t change. I don’t change that much either, in my absolute terms, but it certainly seems that I have changed more than others around me. I am so recognizable but also unrecognizable to myself. It makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense, but it also makes sense.

I find it easier to stop eating. I look back on videos of myself, observing how skinny I was in senior year of high school. I must’ve really not eaten back then.

Things are clearer to me now, which I guess is why I am writing again. I don’t think I want this state to last, however. Seeing the truth about the world in all of its despair is quite a burden, one in which I do not seek to bear. This is who I am, and as much as I try to have a growth mindset, it seems this part of me always catches up to me when I least expect it.

I always liked boarding planes and looking out the window. When I land, my despair cannot catch me. I bounce from hotel to hotel, doing activity after activity, and in those moments, I feel free from all the flaws I was born with that make me “like this,” as I like to call it.

People stay in cities when they have a reason to stay. All of my friends from college are still on the east coast because they found a reason to stay. I am on the west coast. I couldn’t find a reason to stay, so I moved onto the next place I could not call home.