This week I packed up all my stuff for my parents to move out of my childhood house. When I did a final sit in my echo-y room, I felt so worried that my life would be forgotten, most of all by me. This is an irrational fear that because I can’t remember all the days of my life at once, they all become the heels of the brain's bread loaves, uneaten, unacknowledged and left to the garbage rats. When you’ve lived for 28 years, there are a lot of years, and a lot of moments within those years, that felt like they changed your life. But you can't recall them most of the time, so how would they have changed your life?
I feel very lucky I had such a good time in my house, and that the next people to live in the house will appreciate it (they’re getting married in the backyard) and that it didn’t burn down and I didn’t have all my things ruined or anything. But with my good fortune and good memories comes weight. I feel a tremendous weight, a responsibility to remember everything for young Sarah. I feel like I have to take care of her and comfort her and tell her that everything turns out ok. I feel like she yearns to know that 2016 Sarah is alive. That being 28 is possible. And she aches to be acknowledged by me.
It feels overwhelming to do all the little Sarahs justice in my mind.
There’s the Sarah whose most stressful part of her day was someone else making her take a bath. She rode her bike around the block and was scared of the bees in the trees. The people who lived at the end of the block seemed like they lived in another country. There were always skeletons under her bed and robbers waiting to kill her and vampires itching to suck her blood under the thin blanket with which she covered her neck when she was falling asleep.
There’s the Sarah who sat with her Bearded Collie in the front window and told her about her day, most of the time through stares and emotions. When she was supposed to be practicing the piano she instead looked at herself in the reflection of the angled front windows because when she danced, it looked like she was a chorus of dancers doing the cha-cha perfectly in sync. There’s the Sarah who made her dad carry her to the car when a hubcap fell off because she was terrified of bare tires because they were so ugly behind a missing façade.
There’s the Sarah who when 9/11 happened, every helicopter or plane in the sky was her demise. She and her family were bombed in many of her nightmares. She played “store” in the computer room and pretended to scan shiny shirts into an imaginary cash register because women who checked her out at stores were fully adults. She watched syndicated FRIENDS episodes on TBS on the old television in the basement until her mom yelled that it was too late and she was being irresponsible.
Fifteen-year-old Sarah had approximately 30 minutes after the bus dropped her off from high school to sing Fiona Apple or Barbra Streisand in the kitchen and family room before her mom got home from work. She sprinted on the treadmill for an hour while watching the Catwoman transformation scene in Batman Returns on repeat. Sometimes she worked out to the funky 70s score to Barbra Streisand’s most feminist film, Up the Sandbox. She was overwhelmed, overworked and cried a lot in her pink and green room.
A few days ago, as I was procrastinating from packing anything, I randomly looked at my profile’s reflection in a framed picture on my wall.
I thought to myself, "you're the woman you wanted to become."
I am healthy, I am sure of myself and my ability to handle my life alone. I'm the cool Sarah I wrote to in my diaries all the time. The one with freedom and wisdom and the legal ability to be an adult. It’s so strange, but I’m really fucking proud of all the Sarahs for getting me to this point. They should know that every one of their micromoments brought me to me, and each one was a gift, even if most of them do rest forever in the walls of that house.
I feel very lucky I had such a good time in my house, and that the next people to live in the house will appreciate it (they’re getting married in the backyard) and that it didn’t burn down and I didn’t have all my things ruined or anything. But with my good fortune and good memories comes weight. I feel a tremendous weight, a responsibility to remember everything for young Sarah. I feel like I have to take care of her and comfort her and tell her that everything turns out ok. I feel like she yearns to know that 2016 Sarah is alive. That being 28 is possible. And she aches to be acknowledged by me.
It feels overwhelming to do all the little Sarahs justice in my mind.
There’s the Sarah whose most stressful part of her day was someone else making her take a bath. She rode her bike around the block and was scared of the bees in the trees. The people who lived at the end of the block seemed like they lived in another country. There were always skeletons under her bed and robbers waiting to kill her and vampires itching to suck her blood under the thin blanket with which she covered her neck when she was falling asleep.
There’s the Sarah who sat with her Bearded Collie in the front window and told her about her day, most of the time through stares and emotions. When she was supposed to be practicing the piano she instead looked at herself in the reflection of the angled front windows because when she danced, it looked like she was a chorus of dancers doing the cha-cha perfectly in sync. There’s the Sarah who made her dad carry her to the car when a hubcap fell off because she was terrified of bare tires because they were so ugly behind a missing façade.
There’s the Sarah who when 9/11 happened, every helicopter or plane in the sky was her demise. She and her family were bombed in many of her nightmares. She played “store” in the computer room and pretended to scan shiny shirts into an imaginary cash register because women who checked her out at stores were fully adults. She watched syndicated FRIENDS episodes on TBS on the old television in the basement until her mom yelled that it was too late and she was being irresponsible.
Fifteen-year-old Sarah had approximately 30 minutes after the bus dropped her off from high school to sing Fiona Apple or Barbra Streisand in the kitchen and family room before her mom got home from work. She sprinted on the treadmill for an hour while watching the Catwoman transformation scene in Batman Returns on repeat. Sometimes she worked out to the funky 70s score to Barbra Streisand’s most feminist film, Up the Sandbox. She was overwhelmed, overworked and cried a lot in her pink and green room.
A few days ago, as I was procrastinating from packing anything, I randomly looked at my profile’s reflection in a framed picture on my wall.
I thought to myself, "you're the woman you wanted to become."
I am healthy, I am sure of myself and my ability to handle my life alone. I'm the cool Sarah I wrote to in my diaries all the time. The one with freedom and wisdom and the legal ability to be an adult. It’s so strange, but I’m really fucking proud of all the Sarahs for getting me to this point. They should know that every one of their micromoments brought me to me, and each one was a gift, even if most of them do rest forever in the walls of that house.
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