The Executioner

“You should write a letter to your past self”, he suggests, adjusting his glasses as he spoke, “it might aid your healing journey.” “My healing journey,” she scoffs under her breath. A journey that seemed to stretch back so far that she had lost sight of its beginning. And, truth be told, its purpose. “Just give it a try, won’t you?” he says, without waiting for a proper response. “Don’t forget to bring it to next week’s session, so we can talk about it.”
The next six days pass like a blur. She’d managed to put off the task she was trying so hard to forget. But now it comes back to her with a sudden jolt, and she leaps out of bed. With a sigh, she sinks to the ground and places her notebook in front of her. “Might as well get it over with”, she thinks to herself. Effortlessly, word after word keeps spilling out of her like out of a broken container. And that’s the essence of what she truly thinks she is, broken. A necessary evil; only through the ruptures the wisdom can pour out. Within her lie pasts that refuse to stay buried, traces of memories that gnaw at her conscience as night falls, threatening to drag her back through the darkness she desperately tried to leave behind. Tonight is one such night. So, she writes.

Dear past me, 
This is such a stupid task. I feel sad for you, I guess. I feel sad for the little girl that you were. So innocent until the world robbed you of every bit of purity you had, leaving behind an empty shell with nothing but unfulfilled dreams. But I guess this is simply what growing up feels like, right? I swear I’d love you, if only I could. But some of us have been hungry, starving for so long, the idea of being full is worse than the affliction. Maybe I am just being nostalgic. I once read somewhere that nostalgia is never about an actual past but merely a longing for a past that never existed. Did my past ever exist? I wish I could go back in time, witness myself and, maybe, revive all the pieces of me that died, that I had given up on. If only I could salvage the pieces I once abandoned. But I cannot stop myself from thinking that there is a peculiar beauty in killing something that once flowed with my own life force; that bleeds blood that once belonged to me. How ironic it is that out of all the villains in my story, I have become the one to execute myself, each piece I let go a silent massacre. I have killed so many parts of myself, I have lost count. And maybe, one day, after I killed the final remnants of myself, I will simply cease to exist. 

After that she stops writing. “Because there simply is no real beginning or end to this; an ending is also always a beginning, which is exactly why some stories need to end in the middle,” she explains at their meeting the next morning, attempting to justify her decision. “Bold choice,” he says without looking up from the sheet of paper in his hand. She takes a deep breath, unsure of what to say next. “Growing up does feel like a gradual suicide of self sometimes, doesn’t it?” She carefully examines his face, hoping for a reaction, but there is none. To her frustration, he remains silent and just listens intently as she speaks. “I once read somewhere that we’ve all got blood on our hands; that something somewhere had to die so we could stay alive.” At this, he lifts his eyes to meet hers, a look of sympathy on his face: “All that bloodshed was never truly beautiful; it was just red.”