Disorganised
Imagine your eight or nine-year-old self. One night, you go to sleep in their bed as usual, only to have a nightmare. Finally, after the throes of it all, you wake up in a strange environment. Or at least strange to you.
The first thing that’s apparent is your body. This is not a nine-year-old’s body. What the hell? It’s so large. It’s so beaten up. Everything hurts, why does getting out of bed hurt? How did I get here? Where even is here?
Someone’s in the next room of this building, someone about thirty-years-old who greets you with a smile and your name when you open the door into the kitchen. You don’t know how you know it’s the door to the kitchen, or that the room across from you is the bathroom, or that you are two stories up, but the second you realise that the idea disappears. The name they said: it sounds familiar, it is your name. You try to smile back to them, but you have never seen this person before in your life despite the sense of familiarity. Maybe an uncle you met when you were just a kid. You don’t remember having an Asian uncle.
An alarm goes off in the room where you woke up. Walking back to turn it off, you notice a wardrobe mirror and stop to look at yourself.
This is not you. This is not you at all. You are old, frail, unhealthy. Then there’s the horror of recognition. Oh god. There’s a scar from where you fell out of a tree when you were seven. Those are your teeth, your nails, your own nine-year-old eyes staring back at you from bloodshot orbits that don’t make any sense. This is you. But it can’t be you. That’s impossible. You stand staring at your reflection until your housemate comes by to tell you that your alarm has been going off for 15 minutes and to ask you if you could turn it off. You practically run away from the mirror to turn off the alarm.
This is all just a dream. A horrible, no good, terrible dream. You’re going to wake up from it in a bit. You explore the house. It’s terrible. How old are you? How did you end up here? What did you mess up that lead you here? You would’ve killed yourself if you knew you’d turn out like this.
There was a computer in your bedroom. There’s a password. You type in the one you first started using in twelfth grade, despite the fact that you haven’t done that yet, you’ve just started grade 5. You remember your Dad wanting to beat the shit out of you for the time you accidentally wiped the household computer trying to log in without the password. But you don’t even remember when that is. Can’t think about it now, I’ve got to have answers.
Desktop. Nearly a hundred crowded icons and pinned executables. A browser, something you don’t recognise, and Steam. You recognise that one. You start with the browser. Going through the dozen or so bookmarks give you more info. How the heck… why is old you, or I guess you, so disorganised?
You get your name, your job. There’s a number for your workplace. You hesitantly call. You’ve never used a phone before so you hang up the first time by accidentally touching your earlobe against the hangup button. It picks up the second ring. The secretary tells you that your client is about to angrily leave.
That client. You remember their name, age, education, symptomology and history. You remember that you had an appointment with them at nine o’clock this morning, and it’s now thirty past.
“Fuck.”
You didn’t say that. Your lips moved, your lungs squeezed, and your throat tensed, but you didn’t say that. The body you said that. “I’ve gotta go.” It says.
You are lurched upwards. Your clothes are ripped off by your body and you feel like a series of photos you took by accident on a disposable camera when you were seven, dancing in the pouring rain, finger over the shutter. It’s freezing hot and cold at the same time. Mum is telling you to come inside at once, how dare you have done whatever infraction it is that you can’t have possibly had a part in. She’s dragging you to the car, your hair still soaking wet. You’re in the front seat. You’re wearing business suit for some reason. That’s not right. I remember being in the back seat. I was barely tall enough to see out the windows. Because I was malnourished and didn’t have appetite because it’s hard to eat anything when people are constantly screaming at you and telling you they’re giving you away to an orphanage for being such a little shit and it’s clear that you’re the source of all of their problems. And you’re begging them, pleading with them, telling them you’ll be a good boy, you’ll do whatever, please don’t throw me away, and your mother looks down at you with the same mixture of contempt and disgust that the girl you were in love with 10 years later gave you as she left after she fucked you, probably just to make you go away, as a “parting gift” in her mind.
You arrive at work. You’re forty minutes late. Your hair is still wet from the shower you took. You don’t know how to park the car, and someone honks at you for blocking the entryway. People always told you that driving a car in video games was nothing like the real thing. But no. It was precisely like a video game. You park perfectly, reverse parallel, first try. Man, I always knew I could have done anything at twelve. Being good at things was so easy. Whatever you put your mind to you weren’t just the best at compared to your peers, but you were better than even practiced adults, even in complicated stuff like music. Apparently it wasn’t normal to be able to play by ear.
What the fuck happened to them? Are they dead? I can’t find their eyes in the mirror anymore. Time to go into the office. Your client is not happy, but you apologise profusely, and they’re mostly just seeking a design document. You’ll write it for free this evening so that you don’t have to give them a bunch of your time for free as compensation. You know what they’re looking for anyway.
You head down the hall and open the door to your bedroom. It’s dark, and for a moment you think it’s the bedroom you went to sleep in all those years ago. Or last night.
What happened to you?
I don’t know. What happened to you?
I don’t know either.
I think we grew up.
I don’t know how I grew up into you. I would have-
-would have killed myself. I remember.
The only reason we were able to make it through everything, to keep going, was because one day it was going to end. It was going to be better. I was so sure of it.
I’m sorry, kid.
You’re not sorry. In fact, you hate them for them not using their gifts while they were young and fresh to think up some better plan that wouldn’t put you in this sweet hell you’ve ended up in. Forty thousand in debt, ramen twice a day, no chance at marriage, and borderline alcoholism. Pretty impressive for thirty, even in this day and age. Or twenty-five. Who knows, nothing changed, you just got older, you doubt that anything got better.
Let’s go outside.
I’m not going outside.
This time, it’s you that takes your clothes off. You lock the door and pull all the sheets off your bed and the mattress. You stuff them beneath the bed, then pull the mattress in after you, sealing yourself in. It’s cool down here. It’s dark. Nothing can hurt you. You are safe. For the first time in your life you have your own space where you are certain no one can hurt you.
Mum’s arm breaches through the sheets, grasping at the air, finally getting hold of your ankle.
That’s right. She said no pillow forts.
The screaming goes on for a long time.