What I Left and What Left Me

 

I thought I left my childhood behind with the country when I moved away, but I didn’t. The ghosts of the country haunt me, the scents and tastes of those years gnaw at me, the vague faces in homesick reveries grip me by the throat, rasping and whimpering about an uncompleted promise I once made. 

And they won’t ever leave. 

    My childhood does not die at once, but multiple times throughout my life, reminding me of a life I had to reluctantly let go of. It died when I noticed that I no longer want to look back at the younger version of myself. It died again when I stepped off the plane into a land of foreign tongues, like an unfitting trespasser. Fragment by fragment, I tried to grip at the fading memories and begged them to stay—but they never listened. They keep on moving, keep on changing, keep on replacing themselves until the only thing left is broken shards of the life I once had. That life will never return, and I left so soon that I can’t even get a chance to remember it correctly. 

It is selfish of me to change and expect nothing else to. I was so naive as to think that when I return home six years later, things would still be the same way they once were. I was certain that the country would stand still, frozen in time, waiting for me to come back, but no, my plea was nothing but a muffled echo from a land across the globe. No matter how deep my shadows are etched into the cemented pavements, time would always find its way. 

Last year, I found out that my grandmother’s garden had been renovated. The blue gate is now white, the front yard barren—clearing with it a piece of my childhood. A few months ago, some old friends texted me saying the elementary school we attended had changed its name, so much that it’s unrecognizable. The wasteland in front of it is now a park, and they’re planning to build new apartment complexes—beautiful changes, and also another traded piece of my memories. Yesterday, scrolling through Google Earth to hop onto an internet trend, I noticed that a store…no, the store in my grandmother’s hamlet has been replaced by a different business. Yet another piece of the puzzle was pulled away from me, a taste ripped off my tongue, an image that has always been pixelated, now too blurry it stops me from making out any color. Just this morning, a family member of mine passed away—a distant relative, but a close reminder of how impotent I am against the ever-shifting tide that is gradually eroding my own nostalgia. Just like that, the recollections of such days slipped themselves away from me. Poignant, melancholic.

    The next time I return home, I don’t know if it would even be the one I have loved and remembered, for everything has changed. The more my future and present live, the more my past dies. And we all know that you cannot hang onto ghosts, but the ashy, tender haunting of them from once their voices were still audible.

    One’s home would never turn its back away from one. But now, gripping home by the throat, my hands are too shaky, my tears too hot, my laments too faint. There’s nothing I could do but watch it fades away slowly, each slip stinging me like spikes. I can’t count how much of home is left in me, because somehow, there is too much and too little at the same time. Bewailing, I could only hope that I have enough of home to cling onto before the dawn of my identity fogs into dusk.

****************************

P/S: heeeey, Cindy here (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞ 

Latest update: Oct 10, 2025. Hello. I went back to visit Vietnam. Everything has changed. I don't know if there is anything left anymore. It hurts.