hermit crab
You've left for university.
It’s not like you wanted your life to change forever. Living under somebody else’s roof is not the worst as far as you’re concerned, that’s all you’ve known up until this point. You have to take responsibility for a lot of things now that you’re basically-independent – you have to grocery shop, meal prep, do laundry, keep track of time and belongings, you have to budget – it’s a lot. Sometimes it makes you wish you were back home permanently, not having to worry about anything but school and occasionally helping your parents with cleaning.
But then you actually go back home for a while and… it doesn’t feel the same. You start noticing your parents’ most irritating quirks and habits, you suddenly have less room to think and breathe. You’ve tasted life outside these walls and have come back
tainted.
Cursed with knowing.
You find yourself returning to your current life, messy and difficult as it is, with relief. And it’s through that juxtaposition of past and present that you can know, really know, that your old shell doesn’t fit anymore. There is no going back, the world is out there and you will have to face it.
…
You’ve been out for a while now.
Maybe the slog of daily life has finally gotten to you. Maybe someone you know is making you doubt your identity with their endless nagging and mind games, maybe you’re scared of all the bad things that could happen.
But then, as it happens, in a moment of weakness and sentimentality, you reach for an old notebook, one of those secret ones that everybody used to think was meant for school notes, dates of upcoming events, due payments, et cetera, when in reality that’s where you would pour your heart out when there was no one there to listen.
A couple of folded pages ripped from other notebooks fall out, so you collect them, sit down under the warm light of your desk lamp, and proceed to open the thing on a random page. On it, you find a younger, angrier version of yourself lamenting an interpersonal conflict you know wasn’t real to begin with, and with every word read you can feel and individually name each of this kid’s fears and insecurities.
But what breaks you is your old name and grammatical forms. They sting. No matter how separate you may feel from your many past stages of development, you still can’t just forget that it’s you talking back there, can’t just enjoy the throwback in a vacuum.
That’s how you really know that your old shell doesn’t fit anymore. People will gladly hold it against you that unlike many others, you weren’t blessed with the full knowledge of who you were from the start, and you’re full aware that you will likely never be sure of exactly who you are or even what you’re feeling at a given moment, but going back? It causes you pain.
Your intuition has lead you all the way here, away from that pain and towards contentment. Tranquility. And if you can’t trust that, then you truly can’t trust anything. Your current life may be messy and difficult and full of new responsibilities, but there is no going back. The world is out there and you will have to face it.