You wake up in your childhood bedroom, and the bad things that happened to you haven’t happened to you yet. It should make you happy, but instead it aches. You can’t curl up inside your childish innocence because it isn’t there. You could pretend it was, if you really wanted to, but you don’t want to really. As you watch the early morning sunlight dance across the wall, you wonder if you can change things this time. You wonder who you’d be if the bad things that happened to you never happened to you. Did they make you better? Did they make you worse? If the bad things that happened to you never happened to you, would you truly be you?
You wake up in your childhood bedroom, and the bad things that happened to you haven’t happened to you yet. You realise that you’ll need to pretend that nothing has changed, and so you go downstairs, your bare feet treading on stairs that you haven’t touched for years. Your brother is already in the kitchen, and he is still your brother because he doesn’t hate you yet. His face is the same as it once was, trapped in the liminal space between boy and man, and his eyes meet yours with that look that only a brother can master, halfway between awe and disgust, respect and embarrassment, shame and love. Before it really occurs to you what you’re doing, you pull him into a hug, the kind of hug that clamps and tightens, the kind of hug that suffocates but is all love, so much love, love that can maim you and love that can mend you. He stiffens at first, then realises that there is no audience to perform for, no jeering friends lingering in the corners of the room, and, as his bony arms wrap around you, a thought solidifies in your mind that things cannot decay this time, that you must hold onto this bond for dear life, grasping and gasping until the rope burns your palms, because this time you cannot lose your brother.
Your sister is not there. Your sister is never there. Your sister is an absence. Your sister is the space between heartbeats, the gap between ribs, the sound of silence on the other end of the telephone.
You wake up in your childhood bedroom, and the bad things that happened to you haven’t happened to you yet. Your dad comes down and makes breakfast, because that is what he always used to do, and the crackling of bacon and the music on the radio hit you like the melody of a song you haven’t heard in years; first slowly, then like a fierce punch in the stomach with all the force of a car crash. You realise now that you never used to appreciate these tender moments, too tired to do more than sit and watch the breeze dancing through the kitchen blinds. You never appreciated these moments, because you hadn’t realised yet that one day they would be over. You never noticed that, morning by morning, your father was getting older, his presence less resolute, his voice and body less strong. You never considered the fact that one day your mornings would be silent, that one day your father would be gone. But now, burdened by the knowledge that your father’s time is running increasingly short, you wish that you could live in this moment forever, eternally untouched by the sands of time.
You wake up in your childhood bedroom, and the bad things that happened to you haven’t happened to you yet. You make your way back upstairs after breakfast, and, as you reach the hallway, the scent of your mother’s perfume drifts towards you, as gentle as the lullaby she would whisper across your fevered forehead on unsettled nights: a balm of words, a remedy of song. There was always a tenderness to your mother, but there was a sharpness too. She was quick to comfort but even quicker to blame. She was there to take you into her arms after the bad things happened, but she was also the first to suggest that you might have deserved it somehow, that perhaps you had been too forward, too bold, too reckless, too impulsive, too much, too yourself. She was a confidant and an accuser, an ally and a judge, a friend and a stranger. She was your mother, and yet you never truly knew her. You knew only the masks she would present to the world, the image she would carefully curate while the rest of the family was eating breakfast, the perfume, the final act of the performance. You do not knock on the door, because you don’t want your mother to see you. You never wanted your mother to see you, and yet, at the same time, you wanted nothing more. You don’t want your mother to see you because your mother could always see through you, and she would be the first to know that something was different, that you weren’t the child you had been the day before, that you never would be again.
You wake up in your childhood bedroom, and the bad things that happened to you haven’t happened to you yet. You realise with a sense of certainty that you cannot stay. You have long overgrown the mold that was cast for you there. Trying to live out a life that you have experienced before makes you feel ungainly, a giant trying to live in a miniature cardboard town. You’re the only living soul in a house of ghosts, and you can feel yourself slowly becoming haunted. The bad things that happened will happen, have happened, will never not happen, and you would be foolish to try and change that. You wake up in your childhood bedroom, but you do not fall asleep there. You close your bedroom door for the last time, walk down the stairs, open your front door, and walk out into the mild summer night. You don’t know where you are going, but you know that you can’t return. You try and tell yourself that things are better this way, but the lost child inside you knows that that is a lie.
