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Age 24

2024: Moving back home to my parent's house after a particularly bad assault and the subsequent re-awakening.

The first month felt like a dream because I hadn't been around other people regularly or outside near the open sky for a long, long time. I remember staying up all night on one of my first nights back and being shocked that there were so many birds singing in the morning. I remember thinking "I'll never take this for granted again". Trying to hold on to that feeling.

2023: Chainsmoking while drunk in the alleyway outside of my studio apartment. I was one of the only smokers who went outside to do it, and in order to stay away from the ventilation system for the building I would sit on the pavement between the cars parked there, startling dog walkers and passers-by. Once someone asked me to move so he could park his car, and because I was so starved for human contact I rode the high of him smiling at me for the rest of the day. It was a lonely year. Many things got worse.

2022: Leaving my abusive partner and finding a studio apartment for very cheap in a place far enough away that she couldn't find me. I was living alone for the first time in my life. I had a very intense manic episode once left to my own devices, for the first several months I kept my bathtub and the sink and an empty aquarium full of water because it felt lucky. Water gave me powers. I also collected dead animals and vividly remember unsuccessfully trying to scrub the meat off the bones of a half-rotted bird. I also began obsessively working on an rpgmaker game about mania that is still ongoing, albeit stalled now that I'm on sedatives.

2021: Squatting in my girlfriend's apartment and hiding from the landlord. I remember the smell of vomit and soiled rodent bedding. Most of the good memories are from when she was in the psych ward or at rehab. I would spend long nights on the porch with her downstairs neighbor, chainsmoking and drinking and talking about music. He was a middle-aged metalhead roadie who had a pin-up poster of Joan of Arc.

2020: The Minneapolis Uprising. I had just moved into the city and was very involved from day one. I was in contact with a lot of mutual aid networks and as the only person in the house with a car i found myself doing a lot of stuff on behalf of the people I lived with. It was a very busy time. I saw and did a lot of things. Something that stood out to this day is when I was on the way to meet with a front lines aid group. I came to an intersection that had a car crash. Someone had crawled out of the car and was crying out in pain. There was national guard soldier on the corner by an apartment complex standing by with a huge automatic rifle, just watching along with the crowd of onlookers. They didn't try to help the person at all. They were not equipped to help. There was a heavy military presence in the whole city. I remember the smell of tear gas.

2019: My friend's funeral. He died the night I got back from a road trip. I remember the day of the funeral, the people I was with, "friends", left the funeral early. I had to leave too, because I gave one of them a ride. Back at their apartment, they said they wanted to watch a movie. I put on his favorite movie. They said to turn it off because it was too sad. Nobody there knew it was his favorite movie. Then we watched "Megamind". My eyes felt like golf balls.

2018: Dancing at the only strip club in town, freshly 18, freshly moved to a new city for school. The people there were all old and strange. I thought I was getting ahead of them, tricking them in some way. One night one of the bouncers invited me over to hang out at their house after a shift. At a certain point in the night, child came downstairs, and asked "What's going on?". Was hit with the terrible realization that the person I had the most in common with in the room was this child. A bouncer named "T-Bone" called me an Uber back to the dorms.

2017: Playing music with my high school band. I really thought we were going to be famous. We would warm up every band practice by playing "1985" by bowling for soup because we all thought it was funny. Often, the only people at the practice would be me and our guitarist. He was very important to me, and died in 2019. By this point in 2017 our relationship was complicated by teenage angst, at one time we were best friends on track to be something more but then we both got with other people, and it bred a sort of resentment that I wasn't mature enough to deal with. Despite this, the band kept us close. I remember him teaching me my first bassline one day while our bassist was absent- it was the bassline to "Only in Dreams". It was the first time I felt comfortable holding a stringed instrument.

2016: The formation of the high school band. It started in a classroom setting, and was kept alive by friendship and ambition. My friend would write the chord progressions and I would write the lyrics and melody. It was so easy. It was so fun. It felt like anything was possible.

2015: Playing games online and in person with my ex and his friends. We were in a ranked league of legends team that did pretty well and would play DnD on weekends. One of them was really rich and had peacocks in the backyard. One of the peacocks was named Kevin Bacon. I remember near the end of summer we all went jetskiing on the rich friend's property and I got too excited with the sharp turns and launched myself into the water.

2014: Sleepovers with my best friend. I had an enormous crush on her. We would talk in funny voices named "Howard" and "Matilda". Howard and Matilda answered to a "Master" that was just a nose with a little bow like Mr. Saturn. We would draw each other as furries, and our characters were always dating. Our relationship never evolved past character roleplay and a single kiss, but that's okay. I ended up going to a different school and we drifted apart. I hope she's well.

2013: My first girlfriend. She had a lot of internal issues that I was too young to understand and it was a very confusing and exciting time. I remember hiding in her locker to surprise her and she didn't come to school that day and I got stuck. I remember her bringing a pair of rainbow suspenders for me to try on at school and I fumbled with putting them on for so long that she felt bad for me and asked for them back. I remember making friends, real weirdo queer friends, including her, for the first time in my life, because that year I had moved to a new school.

2012: Singing "Down in the Valley" at my grandmother's funeral. After the service, old people I didn't know were congratulating me and it felt wrong.

2011: Biking to a local coffee shop in the summer to meet my friend and go on the computers there. He would pretend to be "Ben Drowned" on cleverbot and I would go on the creepypasta website. I was very attached to this friend and thought what I felt was a crush. He was kind of mean to me and a very stock-standard nerdlet in every way including academic prestige and a circle of friends just like him; in retrospect I understand the reason for my intense attachment is because I wanted his life, a kind of gender envy compounded on top of other sorts of envy.

2010: My best friend. We would write stories together- she was so good at writing, she was good at a lot of things. We were 10 and she was studying mathematics that most college students struggle with while writing novellas that could have been written by an adult. I admired her so much. We were in quiz bowl together and she got us third place in nationals.

2009: Getting into a fancy audition-based children's choir. We did a lot of competitions and the girls' uniform was a velvet dress. I hated wearing it because the texture was bad on my arms, and it was too tight. The practices were pretty intense. One time during rehearsal I lost a baby tooth while singing then held it in my mouth until we finished our set.

2008:

2007:

2006:

2005:

2004:

2003:

2002:

2001:

2000:

1999:

1998:

1997:

Additional comments: I couldn't decide on a single memory for some of the years- hope that's okay