By Aggie, TIWP Student

I was free when I was younger, so I sometimes hate my past. I sit sometimes atop my bed, my high thrown, and look down upon my past. A phone in hand, I open the photos app. I am exhausted from a day of being someone older than I feel, so I like to scroll through the years aimlessly. My eyes light up with reflections of beautiful landscapes, old friends, my siblings—baby faced and wide-eyed—I suppose those are the shiny pieces that form my life. And so, I scroll again, but this time my face is washed with the blueness of shame: the photos scroll slower until they come to a stop at a picture of myself near that deep blue ocean of Point Reyes. Above the photo, my eyes trace the way my hair is pushed clumsily into a ponytail. I see my past self wears a white hoodie with the large green words “MOOSE” spray painted on front, and these strange green pants that barely fit. That night, I overlooked the smile that beamed upon this foreign girl’s entire face, freckled eyes folding into crinkled shapes. Instead, I swiftly scrolled away from the photo, it was easier to put distance between me and her. It was odd, the way she wore her favorite color so boldly and the way she wasn’t trying at all. The truth is, I could write about who I’d be if I didn’t care what people thought of me, but, really, I already know that person. She was me, a figure in my past. I was that fictional person. Once, but not again.