I am Not Who I Thought I Was

On Regeneration

Lately I’ve been wearing an identification bracelet from my childhood. It has my childhood name (Stacy) and my grandparent's address inscribed onto the underside of a little rectangle of stainless steel. On the outside of the rectangle is an American flag, with the words “one nation under god” inscribed beneath it.

I remember wearing this bracelet when I was seven, eight, ten. The years I lived with my grandparents, when my mom couldn’t take care of me. When I was too much for her. It still fits my wrist, which have always been dainty, unlike the rest of me.

I always find this bracelet when I am getting ready to move somewhere and going through the few boxes I take with me. I always put it on until I arrive to the new place. Then, eventually, I decide to take it off, and I put it back into one of the boxes.

I moved a lot when I was a kid. Like, a lot. More than most people I know, even people who grew up in the military. One year me and my mom moved four times, and I went to four different elementary schools. There is a moving picture of memory here, which has to have been altered by so many rememberings: I am in an office, and the secretary asks me how many schools I’ve attended. When I tell her, she says, oh my god.

The years I lived with my grandparents were the most stable of my childhood.

Childhood is when a person learns who they are.

When I moved again and again, I learned that it didn’t matter who I was, because I could always reinvent myself.

I learned not to be too attached to who I thought I was.

I learned to prioritize the comfort of others above my own, in order to stay safe.

Just because we learn things in our childhood doesn’t mean we need to keep believing them, or doing them.

Lately I’ve been asking myself: who do I want to be in the world? I’m two weeks away from leaving Seattle, a city that has defined me in so many ways. I am currently writing this from a table situated in Pioneer Square, where I spent a lot of time as a teenager, being homeless. I got jumped by a group of girls in a plaza I can see across the street. I still remember their voices as they punched and kicked me.

An hour earlier, I cut a fancy croissant with a knife and a fork and drank a cappuccino.

When I ask myself who do I want to be in the world I am not asking myself who do I want to be seen as. I am asking myself: how do I want to interact with the world around me?

It’s not about who I want to be seen as, but it is about how I want to engage with the world. Which is different than what I learned.

Here’s what I know from living in Seattle: I don’t want to engage carelessly with the world. I don’t want to wring my hand over the homelessness crisis and send my kids to private school. I don’t want to post signs on my lawn about being antiracist while refusing to house low-income families in my neighborhood. I don’t want to enable addictions of strangers or friends. I don’t want a really nice car. I don’t want to dedicate my life to accumulating status symbols.

I want to pay off my student loans and live a quiet life and help people when I can, but I don’t want to pretend that I have the power to change the world.

I don’t. No one has that power— not even the people we have said changed the world.

I have been wrestling with myself in this city. It was once so familiar to me. A smaller, middle-class city. Now it’s a wealthy city and it’s a fucking dystopia, where people live out of their cars because they can’t afford housing and people sleep in the awnings of stores selling goods I could never afford.

It’s not my city anymore, and I kind of hate it. I can’t pretend that it hasn’t been gutted like so many of the places I love have been gutted and will be gutted.

I say this, and I don’t position myself as superior to anything or anyone. I do know that I have experienced life as someone without housing, staring into nice restaurants and watching wealthy people eat fancy food while I slept in awnings (that was in SF in the nineties).

I do know that in healthy communities we don’t let people we know sleep on the streets.

I do know that I am not personally responsible for the homeless crisis, and I don’t need to feel guilty when I see people suffering. I do know that I can wish it were different. I do know that for all of history, people have suffered in some way or another, and that people suffer specifically because other people refuse to be uncomfortable. I do know that I hate being uncomfortable, but I also see discomfort as a necessity. Without discomfort I am not human anymore. I’m not living a real life. Prioritizing my comfort above the health of our planet and other people isn’t who I want to be in the world.

I do know that guilt is a kind of wall we build without realizing it, and it hardens us. It It’s not my fault Seattle has ended up like this. It’s not my fault capitalism is fucking terrible and that the never ending need for commerce and sales takes everything good and replicates it until it is meaningless and hollow.

The news makes me feel like I am responsible for everything.

When I feel like I am responsible for everything, I throw up my hands, exhausted.

When I remind myself of my smallness, and my tiny sphere of influence and control, I give myself more agency. I can take responsibility for myself, and I can do better. Or worse. Whatever. It’s my choice.

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Last Wednesday I carved out a little time to do a full moon ritual. So often I forego ritual. My ADHD makes habits and rituals difficult. I forget. Or I feel pressure for things to be a certain way. But on Wednesday evening, even though I was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, I hopped on Zoom and joined Amanda Yates Garcia, along with so many other wonderful people, and thought about what I wanted to release on this full moon.

I didn’t have all the supplies. I didn’t even sit up. I laid in bed almost the entire time. Then, when the ritual was over, I watched Tuca and Bertie and ate Oreo cookies and milk. Maybe a little more than I wanted to eat.

I had promised myself that, when the sun started setting, I’d walk down to Gas Works Park and see the moon rise. So, after two delicious episodes of television and a few cookies, I rolled out of bed. I gathered a jar of moon water, charged with the full moon exactly a year ago. I put my headphones on and turned on Gillian Welch’s The Revelator. I’d been listening to it all day while working on my book, connecting my current self to my past self.

The evening was golden and cool as I walked south to Lake Union. On my way, I pulled neon pink rose petals from the wild rose bushes that line a playground on my block. I held them between my thumb and forefinger.

At the park, I passed groups of people. A sense of calm and peace enshrouded me as I walked. A sense of letting go. As I neared the water, the mustard yellow roof of the moon appeared over Capitol Hill, glowing. I gazed at it as I walked to the lake. A small group stood on the grass beneath the moon, oblivious.

I felt grateful to notice. Grateful for sight and observation.

I walked down the concrete stairs to the water’s edge. A metal barrier separated me from it, so I leaned into it, staring down into the rippling water before looking back up at the moon. It rose. Its glowing yellow light unfurled in a path on the water, like shimmering lace. I recalled a full moon in Big Sur, the ocean, the way the moon flung its silver light over the entire body of water and the waves tossed its light to and fro, as if playing with its sparkle.

I recalled all the full moons.

The moon rose and the city sparked in front of me; its artificial lights white and green and red; its mirrored-glass skyscrapers reflecting the dimming blue sky. The skyline is so different now. The city is so different. I am so different.

I thought of my mother, gone twelve years, and what she would think of the city now. How she would feel. Who she would be. How she cannot be, and is not.

I thought of all the parts of myself discarded in this city. All the experiences I rejected. All the ways I was hurt and transformed and arrested. Everything I held onto. The stories I created about it all. I took the rose petals and dropped them in my left hand. One at a time, I flung them onto the water’s surface. They fluttered down and floated, tiny silky pink boats carrying away what needed to be carried away.

I inhaled as the moon rose over the hill. Wispy, filmy clouds absorbed its glow.

I stood there, immersed in a sense of reciprocity. Of releasing what needed to be released. Letting go of the people I thought I was, or the person I thought I needed to be in order to survive, while also gathering all the little pieces of myself scattered with each shattering event.

Something has brought me home again and again.

And I have answered its call.

And I have peeled away layers and layers, revealing who I was before it all.

And I have accepted that I can change nothing of the past.

And I know that who I am now is my choice.

I can choose to accept myself as I am. I am somebody who can change.

And this is no longer my home.

And my home is everywhere, and anywhere.