An Image of My Former Self

“I need an answer,” my former self writes. I still don’t have the answer. Three years of moving on just ends up finding its way back.

I re-read the only diary I’ve ever written. Former self was full of unhappiness. She was clumsy and her friends couldn’t relate. She writes with big letters and purple ink.

“Let me tell you about the worst thing I’ve ever done […],” former self admits. Too bad she doesn’t know she’ll put herself in the exact same situation.

I thumb through misused cuss words, and awkward spellings, “Tommarow things will be better.” She wants to move on, “I just want to start clean for eighth grade. Finally let everything go.” My former self relies on time to ease her pain.

Can you believe me? My former self babbles on about her silly boy problems. I read her inexperienced experiences. She has no idea what is about to happen to her.

“I wish someone new would come along,” she writes, and I pursue her. My former self is leading me into now. Time warping me into a confusion of past and present. Here and now, I wait, just like my former self. “I just want to know if I’ll ever be able to move on,” and guess what former self? I’m still wondering the same thing.

I translate her inconsistent topics, consistently centered on me; the me my former self saw herself as. I’m pictured as unbreakable, with a heart that doesn’t feel. I’m laughing at her, my poor former self. I am very breakable, and just as able to feel. Her goals are simple. Oh, former self if only I could’ve stopped you.

My former self is puzzling. She writes, “You’re confused, lonely, unloved, uncared for, nervous friend,” right before her scribbled signature. I’m trying as hard as I can to separate her thoughts from my own; but they’ve stuck like the water-damaged pages of my only diary. You can pull them apart, but they’ll just become hollow pieces.

If her past was so wrong, why am I finding it right? Can’t she see, my former self? I’m no different from her, exactly what we were both trying to prevent. I read her words as advice; I take every little, “Omg! Lol! Wtf?!” just like she took every little “Hello. Come back! Wait up!” from him.

We are intertwined and stuck.

I will never be able to let her past go. I let my former self down. That day where I finally let my thirteenth year disappear never came. That day still hasn’t come. And to be honest, former self, I’m sure that day will never come.

“Oh, I don’t like him! He doesn’t like me! We are not together anymore!” I read from the last entry of my only diary. We remember the dragging sadness that came from seeing his face.

My former self is a liar. She tries to convince herself of realities that will never be. She wants herself to be free, when really she is trapped; and I don’t have the key.

Her fragile heart was tested, and her innocent self wasn’t prepared.

I wish I could help you, former self, but we just continue to hurt each other.

“I need an answer,” my former self writes. I still don’t have the answer. Three years of moving on just ends up finding its way back.