Escaping Fate: Am I Doomed To Be A Product of My Past?

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I have few, fragmented memories of my life, especially before I turned 15. I don't know if it’s disconcerting, and sometimes I’m not sure I care. 

I mean, I'm told I was a good kid (mostly). I'm told I was well-behaved. Adults said I was smart.  But why do I remember this all being completely different, then? I don't remember this praise or acknowledgment. I remember fragmented scenes of ostracization, guilt, hate. Maybe if I knew my past self, whoever they’re talking about, I'd know myself better.

But I'd be lying if I said I don't think about my past more than my future sometimes. How can a past I mostly remember in vagueties and generalizations drive my feelings of doom, obsession, and bittersweet nostalgia?

Sometime in middle or high school, we had a class speaker come in to talk to us about something I don’t even remember at this point. She offhandedly mentioned that our parents shape us as people. Without a second thought, I quickly retorted that it was impossible for that to be true- I am and will always be nothing like them. 

So she took it upon herself to share a dread-inducing perspective; that the only reason I am nothing like my mother is because I am my mother’s daughter. My drive to be different would not exist without the marker of my worst fears. 

In an instant, she shattered the idea in my head that I could fully get rid of the traces of the life I had been born into. To this day I constantly wonder if it is ever possible to fully escape it.

Of course, I can sit and talk about economic class and spew capitalistic faux aspirational phrases around. But money is, for lack of better words, a numbers game, and some people started with a lucky spin, and there’s a lot more to life than just that anyway.

I mean, I abhor the concept of regret and refrain from using the word itself. Regret is a waste of time I always say. “The only thing I can do about the past is use it to mold my future.”  In all honesty, though, I’m guilty of trying to ignore the larger blips that I can’t help but get emotional over.

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And again I want to revisit the concept of my future being molded entirely by my past, whether that be my own mistakes and experiences, or the circumstances around me as I came to be.

I can ignore mistakes, I can cut off reminders of my failures– model myself to be the opposite of everything I once was or everything my family is, but is it all in vain?  By directly rebuking these parts of myself and my experience, am I only centering them more- the very things I want to erase so badly?

I like to say I live in the now more than anything. But my present only exists because of my past, and everything I will do forward is just a product of the cards I was dealt and how I played them. 

Let’s say I do succeed in becoming nothing like my mother, in changing into a completely different person than I was in high school, erasing the remnants of the worst times in my life, getting out of this small town, and living my dream. Would I even have the same dream if I was someone else? Could I have become my mother had I not learned what it was like to know such hate? Would the mistakes of my past become active decisions in this hypothetical future?

Twenty years from now I can be leading a completely different life- but would I actually? Is that life not intrinsically linked to the stains of my past? 

Will I ever escape the life I have been born into? Can I? Can anyone? 

I always prided myself on my emphatic hate for the concept of regret, but maybe I am driven by regret more than I realize. I am so caught up with moving forward that I sometimes don’t acknowledge the past as the reason I am who I am. 

Honestly, escaping the life you’re born into is something I can’t even define anymore. I can escape the me who made stupid mistakes in a small town with my mother’s looming control. But I can’t escape who that made me; so is that truly a clean exit? I’m not one to dwell, but it is a dreadful realization. How can I face the truth when that truth is my life is just a conglomeration of everything up to now?

Maybe there’s no such thing as escaping the life you’re born into. It could just be a matter of learning how to fit into it or mold it to fit you. No matter what, though, the class speakers’ words ring through my head every day. I am a product of my environment, I am the stupid teenage girl who nearly recklessly blundered her life away, I am the weird kid, I am the one who grew up dreaming of the day this wouldn’t be my life. 

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I am her. This is my life. I am not writing this in a way that marks my nihilistic and pessimistic realization. I’m writing with the hope of leveraging my distaste for regret and acknowledgment of my past. Why would I want to escape this life? It’s my own at this point. I made it this far. I cannot forsake the bad without also casting aside that which brings me solace.

Escaping your life is a silly fantasy that I have entertained for too long. I can only curse my luck so much before I lose sight of what's ahead. I will always be a product of the things I hate most, but I am also a product of that which I have learned and loved. I am not forever at the hands of whim and circumstance. My hate for regret may be rooted in regret itself, but that does not erase the validity of my original sentiment. Whether I want to or not- my past cannot be changed, but my future is malleable. 

I am not saying my future is entirely in my hands because I have had the dooming realization that circumstance is important but my drive is more important than even that. Some events are unavoidable, but I cannot act as though my past has fully and permanently carved out the path of my future in stone that cannot be worn down.

You can’t escape your past, the life you were born into, or any mistake you’ve made. 

Tragic backstories often belie tragic endings but reform and happiness are not falsities entirely. My past is with me forever, it's why I am who I am, for better or worse, and all I can do now is try and unburden myself of the weight of the regrets. Life is not without its lessons, and the impact of my past, on me and my mind, is something irrefutable. My past is not a dooming fate, my fate hasn’t even started, let alone been decided. 

Strike Out,

Orlando

Writer: Krizia J. Figueroa

Editors: Olivia Wagner & Nina Rueda

Krizia J. Figueroa is a Copy Editor and Public Relations Assistant for Strike Magazine Orlando. The avowed writer, artist, and fashion enthusiast is obsessed with collecting weird or odd little experiences and turning them into niche diatribes through her writing. Driven by whimsy, she’s honestly just as confused by her life as you are sometimes. But at least she can turn whims into projects, poems, or paintings, for the sake of productivity and professionalism. For a good time, email kriziajf@gmail.com.