Memoirs of My Old Self

Everything is different but it feels the same.

Remember when we used to play Red Alert 2? The first computer game we ever played on our first and only desktop back home. Our favourite country was France because of the Grand Cannon that definitely protects our base, although the game is all about attacking, we needed the best defense for protection. And how we hated having Korea as opponent, their Eagles causing too much damage we almost can't get over, unless we have a lot of gold miners--which are pretty slow. Remember hating those trucks? But they are the primary source of construction so we can't just get rid of them much as we wanted to. Do you also remember how dogs made us happy? We used to use a dog to explore the map and locate the opponents. We'd also make pathways to have our team organized; we'd use shortcuts and how happy we were when we discovered those--made our game easy.

Then came Diablo II, the game changer. We'd spend most of our time playing that phenomenal game that we had all the characters, even the devils' names memorized. Sorcerer was our favourite character because she's the most powerful (of course) but we loved them all equally: Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, and Paladin. It was the time when our world was ran by portals, horadric cube, and Deckard Cain, the legendary Deckard Cain. Remember how this game educated you about the characters and places we tackled in college? We fought Blood Raven in the Burial Grounds and we'd chase her avoiding the zombies because she will raise the dead anyways. Remember how we were afraid to enter the Den of Evil but we had to because it was the first quest. But also we never really conquered Diablo because we were always afraid of the evils.

At kindergarten graduation, our speech was "When I grow up, I want to be a doctor", because we really wanted to become a doctor. In Elementary we were always called on stage for being an honor pupil. An achiever, that was what we are. Every contest we participated we always got recognition. Our exam results were almost perfect, if not perfect, and we'd sell them to mom&dad, and grannies for a hundred pesos each subject. By high school we kind of drifted with the achievement because we spent most of our time with social media: friendster, plurk, and the arising facebook. Every night we would open those sites and not our books and notes, update daily, play online games, and stalk crushes. 20-year-old self is saying "What a useless way of wasting time". 

But do you also remember the time when it occurred that dad is really gone and he can't help us anymore with our math homework? That was also the time when mom said she wanted to go with dad and asked if that would be fine, if we can manage? Do you remember the age 12 was the year we started being sad for every little reason, threw tantrums when somebody comes over to the house without our permission, and by 14 we started beating our self up. At 15 we were in love but we couldn't explain the feeling, at 16 we thought we got our shits done. They said the best age to be is 17, but at that age we got our heart broken into pieces. At 18 we were curling up on bed and torture our self with self-inflicted pain. At 19 we knew how to distinguish real and fake friends, and we decided to be anti-social, it was also the age of bravery--showing our real self, letting people have their opinion on us. None of it mattered, anyway. At 20... today, we have a thousand of version of our self. Do we still know which one's true and which ones are made up so we can go along with people?

We've been through all those ages with different versions of self and different degrees of hell to deal with. We always missed playing Red Alert, we miss having something worth defending and worth fighting for, hearing those precious words: "Mission Accomplished. You are Victorious."; We always missed the characters in Diablo II, how every demons resemble the people we met (lmao), and how it was okay to ask for help when we do not know what to do or where to go; Back then we were sure what we really wanted in life, because today it's so confusing to determine why we are here or why are we even still alive. The eight-year-old self would pretty sure ask, "What have you become?" and would add, "You little shit" except the fact that eight-year-old self wouldn't swear. But secretly, eight-year-old self is hating on us, she would be thinking straight in English language because that's what she is: short-tempered, but smart girl. If 20-year-old and eight-year-old selves are fighting, eight-year-old self would win and she'll leave 20-year-old self speechless, feeling l'esprit de l'escalier. But even though 20-year-old self thinks she's a failure, a loser, a waste of space, we low-key love her. She's so honest and pure. She's got a good heart. She wishes everyone nothing but goodness, and she means it.

When did 20-year-old self start to be a bad person? We both know there's a part of her that hates people and wants to run away. We know she's been carrying this desire for a long time but she just can't make it happen. When did 20-year-old self forget about her dreams and decided to make us think about killing all those other versions of our self, including 20-year-old self, to finally begin a life that's undisturbed? 20-year-old self is wanting to disappear completely, but she doesn't know how.

And the desire is so strong that the "WE" needs to only be "I" or "YOU".

"YOU", the version that is written here, or "I", the one 20-year-old self wants to become.

20-year-old said that on our 21st birthday she "will run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live". 

And I will.