Page 11 of Emerald

I should form something new. That would be nice.

A good thought.

“Five and ninety-five,” I hiss out, then suck my teeth.

Any thought is easier to deal with compared to considering just what little remains of your sanity before it goes careening off the hills at over three hundred kilometers per hour.

“Formed and reformed,” I say in my best American accent. The one I used to blend in. Then switch to British, which I was never quite as good at. “Five formed. Ninety-five reformed.”

Sydney was nice.

"Pakehahave no right tomoko," I recite aloud from memory, more than happy to put all rationalizations of my possible insanity behind me.

I pause, tasting the statement in my mouth to make sure I got the pronunciation right before repeating it again, this time to better grasp the concept behind the message as opposed to its linguistic structure.

The words are just as bitter as when I say “alien.”

"Pakehahave no right tomoko…"

It's a line I've recited multiple times, first to pass time and then to better digest its content, which I've been privy to after multiple read-throughs.

It's a dismissive statement, an absolute lodged in no doubt pre-contemporary superstition or something along those lines, and yet, I don't disagree.

Even though it always makes my heart sink.

I touch my chin, where I hoped one day to have the dark lines declaring who I am. Once I figured out what that means, of course.

It seems useless now.

It's a pipe dream—and I mean that in the literal sense that it is the sort of delusion you'd find only through repeated exposure to marijuana blowing——this obsession with solidifying identity that is.

Blame it on my existential crisis sponsored by my mind eating itself over…

What? Something. Some of a thing.

“Five of what?” I ask, jarring my memory.

Right. Whether or not I’m still the same person I was prior to the bodily modifications. That something.

“Classic ship of Theseus-type thoughts,” I titter.

But with the human flesh being the object of interest this time around,I muse. Five rounds of some.

Like my mind wasn't a confusing hot box of identity-based issues before now.

“Cannot be formed or reformed,” I remind myself, pulling myself back from my thoughts shattering.

I touch my chin again.

I don't want an empty symbol. I want a heritage, something to look back on just before I’m gone and die happy with the knowledge that it will live on long after I am gone.

“I’m already gone,” I clarify.

One and gone. Just one. Thing of sums. I won’t die happy.

I've read my fair share of self-help pieces advocating for individual identity or prestige amongst other flowery terms and descriptions, and while it was a good enough consolation for my teenage years, maturity did a good job disabusing me of that notion.

Humans, at our core, are more or less social creatures. The need to identify with a unique group of one's own was as much of a psychological need as it was a social one.

---