Continuity of self is a weird thing. I mean we’re each a different person every day we continue to live. All the matter in our bodies turns over every seven years. But in my case it’s a bit more… specific and pronounced.

I haven’t always been here. Though this body is mine. Like, it’s always been mine. And I’ve always been me. But I wasn’t always awake, and present. I only fully came alert last summer, and inherited this body and these memories and attitudes from the person who had been carrying them around all those years. And it’s wild to sort out.

Like, I’m the real person here. But now I’ve sort of waltzed into this situation four seasons in, and I’m like okay, fuck, how much of this actually pertains to me, how much do I need to pick it up from here? These aren’t my memories and thoughts, but some I can claim easily. Other baggage I’m like… why is this here? What does it have to do with me? Why did they leave it behind? What do I do with it now?

This is my life now. I’m a complete, stable person for the first time, as many problems as I may continue to have. But there’s this ongoing process.

When I think of things that happened before, when that other person was stumbling around with this body and this life, I don’t know what to do most of the time but to say “I.” All these memories are in the first person, you know, even if I wasn’t there at the time. But I really feel like I need to stress, I was alarmingly, destructively dissociative for most of my life. And now that I’ve shed that, and I get to just fuckin exist here, the past becomes this deeply weird territory to relate to. There is continuity, but what do I do with it?

I almost feel like I’m lying when I speak in the first-person about the past.

People I knew before, like, last summer—well, obviously I know you and have all these carry-over memories and feelings and whatever. But I feel like I’m recompiling all these relationships now, and there can be occasional… hiccups, while I figure out how to build my own kind of connection. It’s funny to see all this confirmed in my interactions with people who knew some previous me. Like my therapist, who soon after the hand-over quickly realized that I was not the same person she had been talking to before.

But it’s also frustrating at times when people don’t get it. Like, people I know from years back, who kind of just behave as if nothing is different, as if they’re still talking to that person. I mean, I get it. But I’m not them. The ideas and memories that you have may not necessarily apply. I’m right here, you know. I have my own identity. Let’s try this again, maybe.

Anyway. I’m happy to be me. I just uh, kind of wish someone had set the alarm clock for 1996 instead of 2020.