Heard It in a Past Life: A Queer Complication of Time
About the Series: Heard It in a Past Life
Our favorite witchy queen Maggie Rogers sings the haunting phrase of “maybe there’s a past life comin’ out inside of me” to close out her most somber song, “Past Life," of her 2019 debut album. Her somewhat pensive tone encapsulates how many of us feel when looking back on our past lives — regret, sorrow, disappointment, even anger. Yet, Maggie is attempting to make amends with her past selves through this song, even through her whole album that carries a similar theme. How can we reconcile with our pasts and bring them into our present selves, or even into our future selves?
At Camp Thirlby, we not only encourage our readers to reflect on their past lives, similar to what Maggie Rogers does in her moving song, but to delve into those experiences headfirst through their own personal memoir. Our series to ring in the new year, “Heard It in a Past Life,” to cite her album title, does just this — it showcases the ways in which our Camp Counselors have reconciled with their origins and past selves, relating to queerness, mental health, and more, to bring into the here and now, no matter how difficult that may be. Because maybe, our pasts are more present than what we ever once imagined.
Author’s note: This will not describe every individual’s experience with queerness and past selves, especially those who have gone through significant abuse, trauma and/or transgender experiences. This article is meant to be a glimpse and exploration into how we can confidently move forward in all of who we are while acknowledging our past selves. Your story, however different, is welcome.
I love looking at old photographs. At any given moment in a relative’s house, I am pulling out scrapbooks, photo albums, and asking thousands of questions — Who is that? Why didn’t you keep your hair like this? Was this before or after you got married?
I used to love looking at photos of my childhood, too. I still do, but something has changed. Every time I see a photo of little me, I think: Wow, I’m nothing like her. My parents love her. Why couldn’t I grow up as her? Or, alternatively: Yikes, I really had no idea what life would be like. How could I ever think I had a crush on him? Oh my god, what was I thinking?
When I see my past selves, I simultaneously miss and reject them. I struggle with seeing myself in several dimensions. I am stuck only seeing the “before” and “after,” the “repressed” and “thriving.” These dualities can be harmful. I have to constantly remind myself that I am not the reduction of my past that I have created in my head.
It is all too easy to shed every ounce of who we once were. In the process, we can lose sight of precious memories, milestones, and characteristics that defined us for years. But recognizing this is not enough. Instead, I am stuck asking:
How do we reconcile our past selves with who we are and who we want to be?
From birth, we develop our sense of self in increasingly complex ways. In early childhood, we use attributes — often those which are ascribed to us — such as gender or hair color. As we grow, we describe ourselves based on fairly accurate and stable traits, like what we are good at, what we enjoy, etcetera. But one of the key steps in a child’s development of self is understanding that I am the same person as the I who experienced events yesterday, a year ago, or ten years ago.
Across blog posts, tweets, academic journals, and conversations, queer people often analogize coming out to a second childhood. Indeed, we often follow the same steps outlined before. We understand “I am a girl. I am a boy. I am nonbinary. I am bisexual. I am a lesbian.” We grow to realize “I am good at art when my queer friends encourage me. I am attractive. I feel like myself when I wear these clothes.”
Where we often stumble is in the acknowledgement that who we were when we didn’t have these realizations is still a part of us. We can dispose of toxic memories and know that we were not what we were masquerading as. Yet, in our past selves, we are still present.
I am still the little child that loved to bring her mother every single flower she found. I am still the attentive, quiet child who would hang on to every story my father told. I am not who they imagined that child would be, but I am still that child. You have changed and grown, but who are you still?
When we as queer people disrupt typical timelines of growth, particularly through rejecting the transition from childhood to an adulthood filled with heterosexual marriage and the propagation of the nuclear family, we are participating in a phenomenon known as “queer temporality.” Although academic uses of the word “queer” and “queer theory” often extend beyond what we would now consider the experiences of queer people, queer temporality explains some of the pros and cons of disrupting dominant narratives of growth and self.
Queer theorist Carolyn Dinshaw imagines the present as “a kind of expanded now in which, past, present, and future combine.” Maybe it’s the fact that I overthink everything, but this sounds like a much more holistic and accurate way to describe how I have come to experience time. I am using the good and bad of my past selves to make decisions in the present that affect my future selves. She continues to say that she believes in the possibility of “touching across time,” where the present is affected by other moments.
To take this phrase literally as queer people holds an element of grace — we are touching across our own timelines in order to understand ourselves, acknowledging the peaceful, joyful, or affirming memories our past selves gave us as sacred. We acknowledge the hurt and mishaps we have had, but we touch across our timelines to remind the small bit of past selves who remain that we are better now, and that we do not harbor ill will against them, for to do so would be to hurt ourselves in the present.
As we understand who we are in the context of who we were, the last puzzle piece is fitting this bundle of emotions, realizations, and memories into our future. It’s one thing to acknowledge where we are at now; it’s another to delicately walk the line into who we want to be.
I have debated with myself over every minute change I make to myself to feel more comfortable as a queer person, from cutting my hair to writing about my experiences to muting people on Facebook. Thinking about the future, from jobs to friends to where I live, is complicated when taking into consideration both who I am right now and who I want to be. Even as I love who I am, growing into who I want to be sometimes feels like a series of tiny betrayals to my past selves.
However, that’s simply not true. As we’ve reminded ourselves, we are still who we were, but older, hopefully wiser, and queerer. Essentially, we are the “I’m you, but stronger” meme.
So instead of getting mired in the past, let’s work together to move forward. Let’s give ourselves the room to process who we are in relation to our past selves, articulate what we want and who we want to be, and make that journey together.
Let’s be ridiculously queer and maintain the sense of wonder that perhaps our youngest past selves would have had seeing us. Together, we can take steps to be who we are, not to run away from anything, but to fully step into who we have always been supposed to be.
Sarah Ross (she/they) is a first-semester senior at American University in Washington, DC. Sarah is currently in Berlin for the semester on the hunt for the best Brötchen (rolls). Sarah loves aspiring to grandma status, embroidery, and strong coffee.
