When I was a child, my dad sometimes took us on these trips to places I still don’t know. There was a village near a river which we went to twice, which never had any tourists other than us. There were chickens with their babies walking around, and once one of them got stuck on a pile of cow poop. It was hilarious and sad. Another was a vast, green space close to a road, where we camped under the trees and ran around as kids. And I never learned where these places were.
There were also times back then when I interacted with people I don’t remember. There was the girl in a park in a small town we stopped at on the road, whom I was mean to. And then there was the girl who gave me a kiss on the cheek in kindergarten, which made my mother laugh, one of the only times I remember her genuinely laughing before the accident. Perhaps the only time.
I often wish I could go back in time and write about these memories, or take pictures of them, or make videos, or post Instagram stories. But back then life was different, and now it seems like a dream. My past always feels like a dream.