album

I have an album, buried in layers of folders, covered with an innocuous veil of "my favorite mixtape". You won't see much by looking at the files - track 01, unknown artist, unknown album. They're blank, formless, anything and nothing at the same time, simultaneously the most and least interesting thing you could possibly look at.

How many times can you look at an image until it begins to look like something else? How many times does your brain soften the impact, create variety and memory where there is none, an ancient, ingrained coping mechanism from the days of the first humans on Earth?

I can't trust my memory. It's too fickle, too...vague. I broke my arm when I was nine, but it's impossible to recall exactly what I felt. I know, or at least my logical brain tells me, that it was painful. But I cannot relive that experience exactly as it was presented to me. Physical and mental injury are the same, in that respect.

My album is an album of memories. It's a means to travel back in time. Back to unfamiliar houses and foster parents. Back to my small, fragile, six, seven, eight year old self - the year is always different, and I can never remember which it is whenever I time travel. I travel back in time so that I can know.

Because sometimes my built-in memory fails me. Sometimes, if I go too long without time traveling, I begin to feel pity for them. I begin to regret my actions. I know that my brain is only trying to protect me, but if I can't remember what they did to me, all I can remember is the shame forced onto my young shoulders. It's as if a wall is being built around me, trapping me inside a place I don't want to be.

"It wasn't that bad."

So I sit down, put on my headphones, and relive everything. Time travel, when I wasn't used to it, was terrifying. When I first had the idea to save what I could, listening to it was almost impossible. I hardly lasted a minute. I was in tears the second that loud, sharp voice rang into my ears, swearing, screaming, threatening.

I don't feel like that any more. Now, whenever I go back, I feel angry. My own voice is different enough - puberty and the passage of time helped with that - that I can separate it from the me who listens in now. I hear the fervent apologies of a terrified young child, a child who saw everything and nothing, a child who had nothing to believe in other than the inevitability of failure.

I am no longer that child. Time traveling has taught me that. I am I, the ninth letter of the alphabet, the homophone for "love", the one-letter word with limitless potential.

So I listen, and I feel, and I relive. I keep my album so that I can know the truth, hold it close to my heart.

It's not my fault,

it's not my fault,

it's not my fault.