To Perceive: A Conversation With Myself

I got my first bank card when I was 16, but I bought my first wallet when I was 21. In those five years, I had lost a total of six debit cards and three driver's licenses. Yet I refused to buy a wallet. It seems insignificant, but a wallet to me was a moment in time. Once I bought that wallet, I knew there was a before and after. So I resisted; every card lost, every dollar misplaced, I didn't cave. I couldn't imagine myself with one. I could picture my father sitting at a slant because of his wallet. He’d ask me to grab it and I'd need two hands to bring it to him. That couldn’t be me. While I was certain I didn’t want one, I had never examined why I had such a negative association with wallets. It seemed almost irrational, but it wasn’t—a wallet to me was adulthood, and subsequently, the death of my childhood. So as I stood in the men's section at the Burlington Coat Factory, there was an existential battle in my soul. Growing up, it seemed all my peers were in a rush to do just that. I never understood why. Was it a matter of autonomy? Maybe they wanted to stay up late. But I couldn't see the allure of being an adult. What I saw was a father working forty hours a week. What I saw was the weight of the world growing with every birthday. Growing up is essentially about recognizing and carrying that weight. As a child, I often felt weightless, almost as if gliding through life. My pockets were empty, but I couldn’t care less. 

There were moments in my childhood that I'm almost sure we’d describe as nirvana. Happiness wasn't chased with a feeling of despair. Every moment was as it was. I accepted life as it showed me, because I didn't know how to do otherwise. Playing outside wasn’t an escape because there was nothing to run from. Each experience was both profound and insignificant. All the while, those experiences were coloring the world. What troubles me most about adulthood is self realization—being able to perceive each moment as it is happening. Coming to grips with who you are is frightening, especially if you don’t like what you’ve become. I often ask my nine year-old self if he would accept who I am today. In a twisted way, it’s me holding myself accountable; it’s me holding on to the kid inside

As you could imagine, the childhood I'm referencing was long gone by the time I was 21. Life had already gotten to me. Societal pressures and expectations had already seeped into every part of my being. I was very much so aware of my mortality and the fleeting nature of existence. I had experienced failures so deep that no amount of time could alleviate them. The moments that shaped the person standing in that department store were largely behind him. Whatever pain he was to know could now be juxtaposed to the pain he had already faced. I was no longer weightless; an empty pocket was the last vestige of my childhood. That wallet was everything I feared becoming, even though I had already become it.