Legacy isn’t just what you leave behind

I don’t miss the person I tried to be. The slew of lies I told myself to excuse me from my actual self. The character I created to blend with its surroundings. It was only a matter of time before the self shattered that barrier of denial. Now every correspondence with my past takes me further from I, me, the core of what I am nestled inside branches of social necessity. Still too intertwined with vines and leaves to clearly see the undefined definition of me. A blurry, pixelated glob of plans and ambitions. When people ask where I’m from, I feel like I’m lying when I say Massachusetts. That’s just the place I left my old self. The me who was content with complacency. Content with stagnant living. Content with getting stoned and jacking off to staged misrepresentations of enjoyable sex. Two cans of monster and a hard drive filled with video games and anime. Weekends spent in the bar scene pretending I didn’t despise the girl that compared me to Mackelmore and “just wants to dance”. One very lousy paycheck a week, just enough to underpay my father for rent, buy pot, get drunk twice and laid once if luck would have it. Looking back at that shell of a human, I can’t help but think working retail was more toxic than any of my exes. At least I can reflect on them and be frustrated with someone besides myself.