Back to 2020

I woke up in 2020.

Sweat-soaked, mouth dry, and the smell of burnt Eggo waffles lingering in the air. It wasn’t a dream, even though my phone was still charging on a cracked nightstand, and the world outside buzzed with early-pandemic paranoia. No masks in sight just yet—but the anxiety had already RSVPed.

Then I saw me.

Not 2025 me. No beard, no honk hat, no GooseyQ merch. Just…the 2020 version of myself, confused, wide-eyed, and still thinking oat milk was a scam.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “But you will be.”

We spent hours catching up. I told him about the lockdowns, the toilet paper apocalypse, and why he should not download Robinhood that January.

He laughed like it wasn’t going to hurt.

Then we got serious.

And then I told him about them.

The guys we dated.

The ones who weaponized compliments, used silence like a leash, and made emotional intimacy feel like a prize you had to earn through suffering.

“You’ll think it’s your fault,” I said. “You’ll think love is something you perform for, not something that meets you where you are.”

He looked down. “That bad?”

“It gets worse,” I said. “But only until it gets better.”

We started changing things.

Ignored the guy who only called when he needed a place to crash.

Dodged the situationship who always said “you’re too sensitive” after hurting us.

Blocked the one who said, “You’re lucky I even gave you a chance.”

Instead of spiraling, we started scripting.

I showed him how to turn pain into playlists, how to use AI to write affirmations we actually believed, and how to stop mistaking attention for affection.

Then we talked about family.

The version of it we were clinging to in 2020—the picture-perfect, blood-is-thicker fantasy.

The one that taught us to shrink ourselves for the sake of “peace” at the dinner table.

“You don’t owe anyone access just because they share your DNA,” I said.

“Family’s not built on guilt. It’s built on showing up.”

By 2025, we had chosen our family:

The friends who cheered our growth, the creatives who saw our light, and the version of ourself who finally believed we were worth the love we gave away so freely.

My past self watched me build a new timeline—one boundary at a time. He started dressing sharper, talking louder, dreaming bigger. We fused playlists, swapped jokes, rewrote every loss into lore.

And then there were the escapes—the digital ones. Gaming became our therapy, our adventure, our way out. We revisited the classics: late-night Animal Crossing sessions, chaotic Fall Guys matches, and that one Final Fantasy playthrough where we named the main character “Emotional Damage.” Travel wasn’t possible back then, not physically.

But those games? They took us everywhere—other worlds, other lives, ones where we could win, restart, or just pause. And as the years went on, real travel followed. We stopped waiting for someone to go with us and booked the damn ticket. Because sometimes healing starts with a controller… and ends with a passport stamp.

Then came the moment.

“You ready?” I asked.

He nodded. “But what happens when we merge?”

“We become who we were always meant to be.”

A blinding flash.

I woke up again.

But this time, in my room.

The honk hat was on the hook.

The GooseyQ shirt was folded, ready.

The silence wasn’t heavy—it was earned.

Outside, the city hadn’t changed. But inside? Everything had.

Sometimes to fly forward, you gotta honk at your past and leave it waddling behind.

Because healing? That’s the most positively goose thing you can do.

Honk. Honk. Bish.