Being

I think being able to find a singular moment in which made you who you are, or shaped your character feels inauthentic. Pinpointing one particular event and saying that it’s what you’ve been able to carry out for the rest of your life, it’s what’s made you change your perspective on life, would be unfair to all the other things you’ve experienced. Most things happen subconsciously, things you aren’t aware of and to say that those don’t matter as much as what you want to remember would be doing a great injustice.

It takes time for me to articulate my thoughts because I can’t seem to remember anything. Chalk it up to repression due to trauma, or depressive amnesia, I cannot single out an experience and say, “Yes, this is it. This was the moment I think changed everything,” and carry on. For me, that thing that was passed to me, was my life. Sure, this is a large concept to wrap one’s head around because its vast. In the 25 years I’ve been alive, not one moment stands out enough for me to call it “My Becoming”. The act of my mother giving birth to me, was what’s been passed to me.

My existence was a mistake. I don’t believe my mother thought she’d have me at the time she did. She was in her last year of university, about to start her life, and her choices somehow led to my being here. At no point has she ever said that I wasn’t what she wanted, but I believe that my timing did not match up with hers. The person that I am today, has been shaped by so many things. I have happened as much as things have happened to me, but without my mother’s decision to keep me, none of this…