I

I woke up groggy, which so often happened after a difficult day at the docks. Today was supposed to be the coldest day so far this year and the last thing I wanted to do was load or unload cargo, check anyone’s manifest, or argue with any truck drivers, all of whom always thought that their cargo was the most important, that their firm, unchangeable schedule was the most severe and to hell with any other company or driver trying to get their stuff done on time. They were kings and you were just some lackey getting in the way. But my body did not ache this time, and my brain did not move. I sat up in bed, and could not force the sun away. I looked to my left, and there it was high in the sky, in all its glory, staring down at creation with contempt. It was much too strong and hot for a winter sun. I overslept, I realized.

Looking around, I was struck by the unfamiliar familiarity to which my sight attested. But I wasn’t fully awake yet and my tiny apartment always looked different to my eyes depending on when I woke up.

The first thing I noticed was my bed was too high. A desk sat below another window on the wall facing me though no such window existed, and even the window on my left was much too big from what I recall. The television set – an old model I hadn’t seen around in years – continued its slumber on my right, and that is when my mind woke up.

As I examined my bed and myself, and felt the warm sheets against my flesh – an extension of the world, I had realized a few years ago – I noticed my body was not as it should’ve been. My arms and hands were too slender, my legs too weak, my body too small. This wasn’t the body of a man past his mid 20’s that worked a manual labor job for long periods of time during the day. I was also shorter.

A late realization. This was my room. I was back in my old room at my parents’ house, but this did not feel like a dream and I couldn’t pass it off as my eyes trying to adjust after heavy sleep.

Under my pillow, I always kept my phone, a habit I had adopted in the face of prying family members and roommates – easy to access in case I needed to at night, easy to reach in case I needed to turn off the alarm, and inaccessible to anyone sleuthing around the room. I took it out.

My old flip phone stared back at me with contempt. In that moment, I felt the weight of the entire world’s hatred upon me. I was undesired, unwanted, loathed by all that was and would be. It’s an odd feeling I have sometimes, that things look back at me as I do them, that they dislike and loathe my presence, my stares – mine specifically – even though consciously I knew these sorts of thoughts were nonsensical at best, delirious at worst. Someone told me once – I could never remember who – that these thoughts were self-directed or were some reflection of my own feelings or some such nonsense, but I recall that person – whoever it was – was always spewing drivel and couldn’t be relied on to provide any accurate attestation when it came to anything, so suffice it to say I never took this person’s word for it. I still think I was right not to.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 showed on the screen.

2010 was 10 years in the past. I had never once asked to go back, and obviously never so expected. I had never begged for second chances or revisions, but here I was. I was dreaming, but it felt too real to be a dream. Even the most lucid dream betrayed some hint of the surreal but I couldn’t see any such hints at the moment. I lacked control, but wished in that moment for nothing else.

I held my head in my hands, and breathed air that I couldn’t bear. 2010. “Two years after the market crash,” that was the first thing my mind came across. I was awake and sober. I was, physically, better than new – rejuvenated. This experience had washed away all the years of hard labor, but I hated every second. I hated being confused, and I hated lacking control, and I loathed being put into circumstances where I didn’t know where to start. Another second passed, and another thought with it. The year was significant. That year – this year – I told my childhood friend that I didn’t want her talking to me anymore, that our paths from that second on would diverge and that I just didn’t want to be friends. I had known her since kindergarten, and had not known a time when she wasn’t around, but nonetheless I told her I wanted it to be over. Plain and simple. It was very direct and maybe too callous but I was honest. I had gotten jealous of some transfer student whose name or face I can’t even recall – couldn’t recall a year after I finished high school, in fact – and I was starting to go down a path of apathy from which I have yet to return. A lot of emotions swirled in me around that time and around that decision in particular so I can’t, even now, many years and experiences later pick out exactly what made me finally pull the trigger and do it; tell her off, I mean.

I recall when I did it. It was the last day of school before summer vacation began. Among the sound of cicadas and the superfluous drone of highschoolers, that is when I made her cry. She was confused and angry and sad and devastated and speechless, but though I acted with some ardor or eagerness or whatever you wish to call it, partly to mask some pathetic reluctance or to swat away any clinging reason holding me back, and going along with some infantile conception I had of what dictated mental maturity, I will admit to having felt some joy as I did it. Be it sadism or fulfillment or a feeling of some sort of success, I don’t know why, but it felt good. Right next to the water fountain in the middle of the back court of the school, I said my peace, and left amid the confusion right as her tears started to fall. I heard her sob and try to speak out as I left, but I didn’t look back. That was more than 10 years ago – or perhaps only last Friday, July 16.

I tried to contemplate my situation but found nothing about which to think or consider. I was at a loss. Either I will wake up and forget this – or worse it will linger as I pass through the rest of my life as a phantom of my past, a ghost of my own juvenile creation – or this will be my new reality. Whichever it was, I knew I had no say in any of it.

I did not ask for this – being brought back – and in that moment I could only beg and genuflect from my position and beseech whatever it was that brought me here to take me back to my present.

She was often on my mind, Nana, even after all these years, and I felt twinges of regret when I remembered. And yet, that day was formative and it was part of what made me who I am, never mind what sort of person I am. If this was the past, I didn’t know if I wanted to carry it out again with all of its moments, both my prides and shames (and there were many shames). In a few days, there would be another confrontation and that is when, 10 years ago, I sealed the deal. That is when I slashed her maiden’s heart beyond hope of repair. Until that day came this time around, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I wanted for nothing more than for someone to act on my behalf and send me back. I have been feeling this way the entire time, and have said so before, but be it god or devil, I truly just wanted someone to grant me a reprieve I was incapable of reaching on my own. I didn’t want to right any wrongs or fix any problems that I brought upon myself. I had lived this period of my life already and didn’t see a point in going back.

The door to my room opened, and in entered my younger sister – my chagrin, my nuisance, my other flesh and blood. Yuri stood next to my bed, but I did not notice until she spoke up, “mom’s asking how long you plan on staying in bed. It’s already noon.” I hadn’t heard this haughty voice of hers in so long, certainly not with this cadence or tone. And now, it was like I was hearing her speak for the first time.

Yuri. I looked at her, and she stared into my soul. Two years younger, my sister, a second year attending a slightly subpar middle school with long hair, an oblong face and hazelnut eyes overcast by long bangs that she always refused to cut. Almost as tall as I was at this point, and often had an attitude to match it. I always thought she was mature past her age – at least mother often said she acted with more maturity than I did – but of course there were some lapses wherein she would act exactly the way a girl her age would act. Many of those lapses had not happened yet, leaving me feeling a little expectant but robbed at having my years of experience taken from me in the blink of an eye for some unknown reason or, I feared, for no reason at all.

I continued staring, and said nothing. “What’re you staring at me like that for?” Her head with her furrowed brows was tilted to the side inquisitively and her hands sat on her hips as she waited for me to do something. She was confused, but so was I.

As she broke the silence, she broke my soul. My tears streaked down my cheeks and my chest turned warm, and I finally somehow, indescribably, understood familial love. Perhaps, I thought, this was a newfound feeling and I hadn’t loved her before. But too many tears covered my face and my heart was about to burst so I didn’t allow myself to dwell on it. Her neck as it craned was pure and white as ethereal snow, and for some reason recalled to my mind cattle before their slaughter. I was out of bed, covered in tears and snot and completely pathetic. In her bafflement, I embraced her, and I voiced myself for the first time in my life. “I love you, Yuri.”