I tried to dig deep, all I could see was a blurry memory

WORDS: ROSHENNA MHAE RAPADA | DECEMBER 18, 2023

I never get oblivious until I try to reminisce about all the good and the bad of my childhood, and the faces I’ve had through the years.

It was midnight of December 1st, a time my soul is most attached to.

Growing up, I can barely understand the development of this profound emotional attachment towards December that always left me in tears. There will always be imprinted emotions of grief, nostalgia, and astonishment. Always.

From the cacophonous streets, tiny, soft and huge green Christmas trees, cute Christmas balls that we jokingly use as earrings, diverse sounds of the surroundings, and the colorful fireworks, to busy working people and quiet vicinities, solemn and introverted celebrations, gift-giving, and random acts of kindness and words of affirmation.

Things have been changing. Things have become so different now, and there is mixed joy and pain I inexplicably feel whenever I encounter one of those on a December night—when the cold breeze touches my skin and reminds me to breathe, and be more gentle.

I feel like something from my childhood happened that aggravates this deep sense of homesickness to a home I have never been in, and when I try to dig deep, all I could see is a blurry memory. My mind forgets something that the farthest room within cannot, and it frustrates me a little.

I cannot understand. When I turned 18, I have been feeling these specific emotions that surface my vulnerability. I started writing saudades about things and people who create an enormous circle in my system where loneliness can liberally roam around. My soul became so inclined to nostalgia and, sometimes, I run out of energy dealing with it.

Who was I at 7 or 12? Especially from the past several Decembers that have gone in my life? Why do I have affiliation to extreme emotions that drown me in an agonizing, flowing river?

Whenever I try to remember childhood—with the way I talk and act and how my face lights up to the gifts and love in commemorating holidays, every component of my brain fails to recognize the physical aspect of younger me. It gives me the metaphors of the future, and what’s left is all the yearning and mourning that lingers through my veins up until my age.

Oh, God! Oblivion to my childhood memories.

I don’t know when it started, but I stopped seeing my younger self smiling at me. She stopped reminding me of what I looked like. All I can see is the blurriness of the past and the remaining child-like heart and vulnerability. Thus, this undeniably makes me lonely.

But, tonight, something makes sense and I do not want to force this desire to remember everything that my younger self kept from me. There might be things that are not worth remembering because she does not want to hurt me.

Perhaps, my younger self says a lot about the current emotions that I deeply feel, and that she really is not smiling all those years. Perhaps, life has been so cruel to her at such a young age that she doesn't want me to see her crying in the past. Perhaps, what all she wants is for me to remember the great times and yearn for the beautiful memories.

It’s quite making sense now, but at the same time, I still miss her, unfathomably.

With the lingering warmth of the sky and a touch of moonlight to my skin, I speak to the stars, I still wish she was able to get all the gifts of love, patience, and tenderness from people who saw her first, so she wouldn’t have to suffer the cruelty of life.

After all, she’s still a child who wants to be remembered…