Jennifer Packer, "Interior" (2021), (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino/Hyperallergic)
Déjà Vu
I have lived today before.
The water tastes the same as it did seven years ago when I was on the school bus thinking about what chores were waiting for me at home. The heat on my skin feels like the summer I was 8, playing suwe with my cousins outside the house. The lump in my throat is as real as it was when I was 13, and a strange man followed me home, touched me in a way that made me cringe and asked to be my friend. I have dreamt of this joy and cried for this ache again and again.
A déjà vu unearths my memories and dreams I have long forgotten. It brings me a gnawing feeling that my life has happened before, and I am in a never-ending loop reliving selected moments. At intervals, I want to create a disturbance in the matrix. Maybe set off a bomb in my bedroom or tell the wind to cease its movement. But certain events and feelings are to be remembered, and even if you try to sweep them away, the dust will still surprise you with its unannounced presence.
There are things I must hold on to for my sanity, one of them being déjà vu because you can be on your knees offering prayers for all the great things you need from life, but the great thing is in the room with you, and you do not even see it. You do not see that the great thing is the déjà vu.
You do not see that the sun has the exact glare today as it did on the day your sister was born, and the air tastes like the spaghetti you and your brother ate when you first talked about how relationships change you. That as much as the ineradicable terrible memories come in nauseating waves, the good ones also come in fading fragrances, undetectable at first but consuming with each breath you take. That the memory that drowns you also comes with a nostalgic buoy that holds your head above water.
Jamais Vu
My anxiety always feels old and new, bringing with it ‘jamais vu’—an unfamiliarity in the familiar. I often wake up startled with an impending sense of danger, even after I have convinced myself the night before that mornings are for breathing, not suffocating. I spend the first few minutes of every day convincing myself that there is no reason for life to be this frightening. Usually, convincing my mind is easier than convincing my body.
My body remembers what my mind forgets, and my mind remembers what my body forgets. Long after my mind has moved on from this fright, my body will still carry the shock of being alive, of not knowing what triggers such a severe uneasiness.
My anxiety is jamais vu—like staring too long at your face that you forget you are real. You are there, but not. You know yourself, but you do not. Someone strange is staring at you, but they are you.
Presque Vu
In all the times I have tried to remember being in love lies presque vu, an incompleteness that shadows the feeling of falling so freely into another person. I cannot remember how being in love felt because I did not write it down sufficiently, not as much as I would have liked.
When I remember my past loves—few as they were—I get a whiff of emotion that could help me recall what the good parts of loving them were like, but it feels like I am on the brink of a realisation, and no matter how close I get, I cannot fully grasp it. It comes to me in fragments—the emotions, the words that floated, the promises. The bigger picture is an unfinishedness that makes me wonder if the love ever happened. Part of what heartbreak does to you is to trigger the forgetting.
What I remember most is the fear—the spiralling out of control, the aversion to being powerless. I was terrified of the prospect of falling even deeper into that person, then getting up from that fall and walking away as if it did not break something inside me. This dread of being lost in someone else and of losing that person permeated even the good moments.
The next time I fall in love, I will write about the good as much as the bad. I will write with the fervour of someone who does not want to forget.
Already, Almost, Never Seen
I sometimes receive an unfinished formula for overcoming my trepidation towards life and love. It sits at the top of my tongue, but it vanishes before I work out the equation. I want to pinpoint the moment this fear began to grow inside me because it could offer me the possibility of retracing my steps and watering my courage instead of this exhausting apprehension.
While the déjà vu, jamais vu and presque vu make me question my sense of reality, I know they have purpose. Not all things should be familiar, even if I have known them well in the past. Some memories are worth holding on to, even if they are fleeting, while others are better left behind.
In all this vu-ness, I will find a way. I will find a way to enter the fire and stop the room from burning. I will carve out a way to witness all the women I could become without this persistent apprehension. I am locked in an existential battle with my fears, and as far as I know, there is no winner. Yet.
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