I wish I had started writing diaries since first grade. I feel like my previous selves, one in fourth grade, one in eighth grade summer, and one during my preparation for the ACT, had different operating systems that I no longer have any idea how they looked like. I could call each of them my local peak with regards to personal achievements, but it remains unclear how that happened. The era between my third and seventh grade was punctuated with so many artistic, conceptual, and identity influences, yet I was not actively aware of how much I wanted to journal the way I thought.

This narcissistic infatuation is inspired by random thoughts evoked in my dreams or right before my sleep. In my junior year of college I came to realize truly how much timed essays had traumatized me. After one lucid nightmare I unpacked many more layers: the different strategems I devised to avoid being called by my 8th grade Biology teacher when she asked for our practice notebook, the hours I spent rushedly copying notes of Geography lectures because my previous ones were too poorly hand-written, or even the math midterm problems that could only be solved by my IMO medalist middle school best friend’s three-line note slid to me as he took a bathroom break. Being on auto-pilot was a fight-or-flight response that, on many occasions, helped me survive grade school.

At yesterday’s midnight was the conjuring of a belt I wore starting in fourth grade. It felt surreal: I could remember exactly how much I appreciated the adjustable incisors that clipped onto the fabric to fit a very oversized pair of pants to my waist. This might have been my first consolidation of style. Leather felt too old and their shades of brown could never mesh with the hunter green theme of my school uniform. The fabric was quilted, giving a facade of venture and pluck like that of Russell in Up. I could not fall asleep with the sudden recollection of this activity I was performing everyday, my fingers going through the motions involuntarily securing the clip.

So far the contingencies of this dawning realization have not uncovered much more insight into my young brain. Maybe the belt was quintessential to my self-confidence; maybe it was an affirming step in my perception of society. The evidence is scant to support any hypotheses. I need many more similar instantiations of different idiosyncracies to deduce some framework of what I was like and when the divergence occured. I was probably a lot simpler in my thought process, but maybe that was a good thing. Hopefully my upcoming visit home would allow me to reconnect with the corners of my life, many I intently shelved to the subconscious.