An Open Letter

If I think back, I know that I have memories, Sneaking behind my parents back to play Minecraft with my school friends over Skype. I remember that I had Days after school where I would play Minecraft with my childhood crush, who I eventually ended up asking out with a coded love letter. I vividly remember giving her the note that says that I like you right as the bell rang for the school day to end, and I ran out of that building and I vividly remember how much my heart was beating and how it felt like I was seeing the same colors I’ve seen my entire life, except I was finally appreciating them for what they were. We dated for a year and we would exchange a full page letter to each other using the cipher that I still use to this day. I remember one day I had to rip up all of the notes and flush them in the toilet because I couldn’t risk my parents finding them. I remember one day in class in seventh grade while we were sitting next to each other she wrapped her leg around mine and I got so incredibly flustered I didn’t know what to do and I panicked. On the last day of school before summer break, she tried to hug me goodbye and my nervous system lit up, causing me to duck and roll and run away.

I remember the first day I met the friend I still play games with weekly almost a decade later. It was in a normal game of League of Legends, and the person he was playing with was chatting back with me and my friend. He sent a friend request and have politeness I accepted it, even though I didn’t really like him. One of the happiest memories I have in my life was shared with him in a karaoke bar in Japan last year. He’s one of my closest friends.

In elementary school with my friends at lunch we would jump around the grass fields and role-play being Pokémon trainers. One of the earliest memories I have was in first grade writing a full page for an assignment about how I dreamed of turning into a Charizard and flying to school.

Sometime around second grade, I had a dream where I flew by using pieces of paper on my hands as wings. I was so excited for recess, and I ran as hard as I could and I was not able to fly. If I’m being completely honest, a part of me still does believe that if I was to go now with two pieces of paper, all I would need to do is just run hard enough and flap with enough conviction, because I remember the feeling of the wind lifting me up.

I say these things because someone asked me what my earliest memory was, and the thing that came to mind was the first time thoughts of suicide came to me, even though I didn’t even know what suicide was. It presented itself in a bottle of some sort of chemical I was told by my sister would kill me if I drank it. And I remember how much I wanted to drink it, not because I wanted to get away from anything, but just because I thought it would be nice to die.

Depression robbed so many memories from me, and it continues to steal whenever it encroaches past the small closet it’s allowed to call home in my mind. A consequence of this is when I look back at my childhood all I remember is the suicide attempt, the plans, and washed memories of numbness, with the only exceptions being things I clutch onto as justifications for why I am the way I am. I desperately paint back in the memories of summers trapped in my room, or the places where the neglect was apparent. If I don’t preserve these memories, I may lose them along with everything else from my childhood, except these are the receipts to prove that I am hurt. But there’s no store for me to return these to, no way to get any value back from them aside from at most, acknowledgment they existed. And I wonder why I do not hold onto the happy memories the same way.

Whenever I look back at childhood I’m free from nostalgia because I only remember the tragedies, but if I hold the earlier memories I mentioned with the same hand, I’m left with a sweeter picture that makes it a little bit harder to leave. And I do have to leave it, because I cannot ever go back, but maybe it is a kinder thing if I was to carry something worth missing.