We Are No One

I sat in the bathroom staring at the cuts and putting band-aids on them. They were the kind of band aids that had pictures of animals on them, and worked better as stickers then to heal wounds. Actually, did band-aids ever actually heal wounds? I had no idea. Maybe they had super duper military ones that could heal a killer wound. The more I thought about it, the stupider, and less relevant it sounded compared to my thousand other thoughts. I was the kind of person who could think about a million thoughts in about three seconds. When I spoke, my thoughts raced quicker than my speech and I often didn’t know what I was saying, and couldn’t end my sentences because I didn’t know where I had stopped. But that’s just me. I guess that’s a question to worth thinking about: who am I really?
It was chilly through the drafty city building as I left the bathroom. As I paced town the steps, the brown canvas bags below glared at me, like saying “Take me to your leader!” and demanding to be brought 55 steps up. I gave the old canvas bags an apathetic look and trailed my way into the kitchen.
“Mexican or Chinese?” Mamma asked, without lifting her eyes from her Vogue magazine. We hadn’t begun unpacking yet, so the whole house looked bare, but a few chairs, a table, and a ratty green couch.
“Chinese.” I replied, grimacing while my eyes scanned over the empty white walls. They kind of reminded me where someone should be locked up. Before Mamma could respond, I turned away and walked up the stairs. 1, 2, 3, 4...53, 54, 55. I had a blue shoulder bag Dad had given me for my tenths birthday slung over my left shoulder, hanging low down by my knee. It was filled with all the things too precious to leave behind, or let get crushed in the canvas bag. As I sat down to rummage through the contents of the bag, I noticed a small calendar hanging on the opposite wall, closest to the door. Shit, school starts in three days. It was already September; I should have seen it coming. Before I could totally recollect all my thoughts, I was beckoned to the kitchen. A fly buzzed around, you know, like flies do. How you can’t really see them, but you sure as hell can hear them. It’s kind of like, “whoa, where the hell is that coming from?” and then you notice it and it doesn’t go away, but orbits your face like the solar system or like you haven’t taken a shower in weeks. As I arrive in the kitchen, Mamma tells me that we have to get the house in order, to go and drag the canvas sacs up the stairs and sort them, and put everything away neatly.
It’s like a whole new beginning; it’s being reborn in a whole new life. The only difference is I can’t forget what went on before we got here, I can’t forget that summer. No matter what I do to forget, all the things I do to distract myself, my memories are still secretly there in the back of my head. The thoughts are ninjas, secretly hiding in the convolutions of my brain. I don’t want to be here, I would kill to actually start my life over as someone else, not just move and pretend like nothing ever happened. You can’t just pretend these things didn’t exist, that the last few months of my life just didn’t happen. If this was a dream, now would be the time to wake up. I would wake up in my bed in Texas, to the smell of pancakes and coffee. Life will never be the same, all these old ways are changing for me, and I don’t want to let them. I wish I had a choice. The thoughts keep rolling over and replaying like a sick, twisted movie in my head. It’s a broken record in my brain, it’s skipping all the great things that have gone on in my life, and just started focusing on that summer that summer that summer that summer.