I couldn't tell you the last time I looked through them, or even why they were sitting in that particular spot in the first place. But when I opened them up, I'd be lying if the emotions that rung out in my head like a bell were ones of joy.
The book contained the pictures my mother took for me before my senior year of high school. It was the late summer of 1994. I was 17 years-old, and how different I do look.
I could only flip through it for a few minutes before having to put them down or else I'd find myself getting more upset. As I went around and ran my errands for the night, though, I kept thinking about this version of me. How young and naive to the world I was. How much I was looking forward to "growing up", seeing the places I wanted to see and doing all the things I wanted to do, without any concept of what was waiting even a year down the road.
- Within six months of this photo being taken, one of my brothers will be dead, and it'll tear me apart.
- Two months later, I'll become functionally homeless and a perpetual vagabond for over a year.
- At the end of that, with my life seemingly put right, I'll choose to shoulder a burden of guilt and regret which has dictated the course of my life ever since, but not before serving the punishment that came with it, living under the very real fear I could die at any time.
- I'll try again to set my life on the right course, only to stumble and become angry and bitter and vengeful to the world and the people in it, who seemed to have no comprehension what I was either going through or trying to achieve.
- I'll marry, and try as best I knew how to be a good husband for a decade, only to see my efforts fail.
- I'll try again, meeting someone who I want to give my heart to, and have it broken again, and both not know how and not want to let it heal.
- I'll choose to pursue the dreams I wanted for myself, even before this photo existed, pushing myself harder than I thought I was capable of. And once I get them, find out that the price I'll pay for my ambitions far exceeded any amount of money.
- I'll have to make a choice out of absolute fear which results in the loss of one child, then lose my second when that fear was ultimately proven to be correct.
- I'll meet amazing people. Smart, talented, insane, funny, beautiful people, and I will lose so many of them that I'll find it better to retreat to a quiet corner and vanish than try again.
- I'll let my anger and envy get so out of control that I'll hurt people I love the most, and spend years hating myself for not being a "better" man.
- This world will do all it can to knock me into the ground and make me stay there, but I keep getting up, even though I don't want to anymore, because I'll learn I simply don't know any other way to keep going.
What I won't learn in that span, though, is how to forgive myself for who I'll become, because if you'd have told me at 17, that this is what was waiting for me, I'd have thought, if you'll pardon the bluntness, you were quite fucked in the head.
And I guess that's what is bothering me so much at this moment, because I remember what my outlook on the world was back then. How much different I was. I smiled and laughed more. I wasn't nearly as afraid as I am now and I sure as hell didn't doubt myself as much as I do now.
If time travel were actually possible, I'd show how dangerous it could be because the first thing I'd do is step out on the lawn of my mother's Maine farmhouse on the August afternoon, sit down with that kid and plead with him to change things while he could and get it right.
"Be who you were always supposed to be," I'd tell him. "Don't become me."
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