I didn’t just block out Aimee when I hid from the memories of my past. I blocked out myself. I let my old self die with her. But I didn’t need to. I shouldn’t have let her. No wonder I’m unhappy in my life in LA. I have no idea if it aligns with who I am, because I abolished all the versions of me that existed before I ran away and started pretending.

Literally. For a living.

I feel awash suddenly with all the things I’d forgotten how to feel. Warm hose water on my feet and the metallic smell of damp concrete where the water leaked at the faucet, sunburn on my shoulders, the sting of sour Skittles on my tongue, the pinch of the chain from the swings at the playground, the scald of bare thighs on the hot back seat of a Toyota Sienna that had been baking all day in the sun. Being told to be quiet for singing too loudly by myself in my room and feeling embarrassed. The delight at getting to pick out some kind of treat on a boring errand with one of my parents. Something like Reese’s Cups at Home Depot. The ecstasy of seeing my name at the top of a cast list on a bulletin board. Being happy and moving instantly into a jumping hug with my best friend, no self-consciousness.

The achy pain of the mono that got me out of school for three weeks in sophomore year of high school (not all bad). The devastation of not being cast in a show. The furious boredom of a grounded Friday night. The biting flies that swarmed in the late afternoon at the community pool where we sometimes went to hang out with friends. The searing truth of a torn-open, skinned knee from crashing my bicycle into a parked car.

Yes. A parked car.

That’s not the point. The point is, I’m clearly having a significant breakthrough.

I knew, of course, that I had blocked Aimee out and that it wasn’t healthy. But I hadn’t understood or considered exactly why. It hadn’t occurred to me that I had hidden more than the death and grief from myself. I didn’t want to remember who Aimee or I had been back then, because we had both been doomed. It was too painful to remember them as they were, those happy, sometimes sunburned kids with devastation lying in wait for them.

But pretending changed nothing. It gave me even less of what I missed.

“Let’s go join the party,” says Aimee. “I’m alive. Might as well have some fun.”

I laugh, tears still brimming my eyes. “Right.”

We walk together offstage, hand tightly in hand, and then out into the empty hallway beside the entrance to the auditorium.