Always on Your Side (NaNoWriMo 2019)

26.

26.

Does the past matter?

I want to believe it does. But maybe it only matters to me because I don't have a future.

It also might be a example of not knowing what one has until it's gone. I once thought the phrase trite; alas, I didn't realize how true it would come to be. I was a miserable child. I didn't belong anywhere - not at school, not with other children, not even with my own family. The feeling I remember most clearly from those days was a deep-set sense of inadequacy, trained in me from my earliest days. I was a deficient person. I had to change myself to become worthy. No matter what I did, it was never enough. I learned manners, I stopped rocking and flapping my hands, I practiced conversational skills and "executive function" habits, but everyone could still tell I was different. I was not the confident boy my mother and stepdad wanted me to be, I was not able to fit in with any clique in school; either they didn't want me or, even when people were kind, I could not understand them and they could not understand me on the level that is necessary for people to form a close friendship.

And yet there were moments - fleeting though they were - when I felt I did belong. As a child, I didn't need to be emotionally close to my friends. I didn't need to be able to have ordinary conversations with them. They didn't need me to make small talk with them or refrain from certain habits. They just needed to imagine with me.

Skyland. A utopia I shared with my two dearest friends: my sister Len and my neighbor Elizabeth. There, I didn't have to avoid talking about butterflies. I could flap my arms as hard as I wanted, pretending to fly. No one assumed it was pathological. My loathsome therapist even praised me when I told her I played with friends.

I've always been fond of things that could go into the air. I knew it was a freedom I would only be able to attain in imagination. But every night before falling asleep, up until I was perhaps a teenager, I would swaddle myself in a cocoon of blankets and pray I would turn into a butterfly. If I turned into a butterfly, I could fly away to the Skyland I knew was there. If I turned into a butterfly, I could become the person I wanted to be, instead of the person everyone wanted to turn me into.

I grew and changed. But I didn't grow into the person I wanted to be, nor did I grow into the man my mother tried to raise. I grew instead into something deficient. Academically acceptable, socially functioning, but not thriving. I am like the butterflies we raised from caterpillars in second grade, the ones whose wings did not develop, who would have perished had they not been sheltered in a mesh dome. I am like the butterfly I found dying on the sidewalk in the spring. My mother told me to leave it be, it was meant to provide nutrition for the birds and they would end its suffering.

So why am I doomed to life in a world where I cannot fly? Who will come to end my suffering?

No one. It's on me to do it myself.

The other playmates I shared a childhood with have bright futures ahead of them. Len is about to graduate high school. Liza is going to start her sophomore year at UCLA. I wish both of them the best.

And yet, some of my most painful memories were the days I realized they were growing up and leaving me behind. The days when I'd call Liza's house and ask if she wanted to come over and play "Skyland" - and she would say "I'd rather see a movie" and then "I'm with my other friends" and then finally "My mom said I can't" which it took too long to realize was a lie.

With Len it lasted longer. She was younger, and she's always been flexible. But she too started saying "I have too much homework" and "I don't feel like it." Sometimes, in later teenage years, I would suggest we do something else with our Skyland world - make a Skyland replica in Minecraft, or a novel about it. Len would always say "Sure" and I think she thought she meant it - but it soon became clear only I committed to these projects. I eventually stopped asking.

I don't fault Len or Liza. They were meant to grow out of this cocoon and I was not. They didn't need to dream about freedom - they knew they would achieve it someday.

I tried to move on like them. I tried to find comfort in the promise of future independence. When I grew up I would not have to sit still in a chair. I wouldn't have to ignore bullies.

I was lying to myself.

I cannot have Skyland in the present and I cannot have freedom in the future. So, in my last few months of life, I look to the past for comfort. The past matters to me. I hope it matters to you, too.

Len: you will find your next clue on this phone. Think about the highest you can get to the sky.

~
That's the essay Brendon left for me in his notes, written in the Asparagus alphabet using the draw function. I found it by going to the tower before the highest slide on the playground, where Brendon had written out a full guide to the Asparagus alphabet. I spent a day translating Asparagus letters to sounds, then sounds to words.

I didn't send this essay to Lizzie. I haven't heard from her at all since she promised to meet up with me again someday.