Childhood

Momma would always show me pictures of me when I was younger, going through old photo albums or flipping through the dusty boxes that stored memories from the past. From the day I was born to the first day I started elementary school, she would show me these moments as if they were sacred artifacts of a life well-lived. She'd pull up videos on her phone, ones where you could hear my little baby cries, my tiny voice struggling to form words, or those precious first steps I took as a toddler, so unsteady but filled with determination. There were clips of me running for the first time, with my legs all over the place, trying to keep up with the world. And then there was that video of me singing "Happy Birthday" at my 4th birthday party, my voice high and a little off-key, but my smile was so wide, it seemed to stretch across the room. My face beamed with pure joy, as if joy was the only thing I knew.

There was also that one picture of me on a playground. You could see me sliding down the slides with a look of exhilaration on my face, my hands gripping the sides for balance. I remember picking up wood chips and tossing them into the air, laughing as they rained down on my little hands. And then there was that trip to Chuck E. Cheese. Dad and I were riding in a race car, both of us laughing and pretending to be race car drivers, but the moment I remember most was when I had a princess wheel in the passenger seat. I sat there so proudly, pretending I was the one driving, taking charge of the car as if the world outside didn't matter, and all that mattered was this little moment.

These were the kinds of memories my mother would brag about whenever anyone came over, retelling stories of my childhood with a soft, warm glow in her eyes. These were the moments she cherished the most. They were the fun-loving, carefree moments that she would say defined me, defined who I was. They were the pieces of me she had collected over the years, like small treasures she could hold onto forever.

But for some reason, none of it felt real to me. I couldn’t seem to remember a single one of those memories, as if they belonged to someone else. It was as if those moments, those flashes of happiness and laughter, had never happened to me. Like I wasn’t the one in those photos and videos. Like I had never been born, never had a childhood, never had the chance to be that joyful little girl who could climb on slides and pretend to drive race cars. It was all so distant, so foreign, and it left me feeling lost. How could my parents remember a version of me so clearly, but I couldn’t? How could they hold onto these beautiful, vivid memories of baby me, but I had no connection to them? How could they recall the exact moment I said my first word or the exact day I took my first steps, while all of it was a blur to me?

I know the girl in those photos and videos is me. I know it’s me because I can feel a strange, intangible connection to her, as if we are somehow linked even though I have no recollection of being her. I can see her in the pictures, hear her laughter in the videos, feel the warmth of the memories that others hold so close. But I wonder—who was I without her? Who am I now that I don't remember her? Was I someone entirely different before the person I am now came into being, or has my past just been swallowed whole by time and forgotten?

And even more, who would I have been had I remembered? What would I have done if I could relive those childhood memories, if I could look back at myself with the clarity and awareness that others have of me? Would I be the same person, or would I have been someone entirely different, shaped by the memory of a past that now feels like a dream, distant and unreachable?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and maybe I never will. But the more I look at those pictures, those moments captured forever in time, the more I wonder who I truly am, both the person I was and the person I am becoming. How do we reconcile who we were with who we are, when the past is just a collection of images and stories, and the present is all that we really have?