illusions of perception
31 March 2025
We often try to hide the past from ourselves, especially our own past, whether that be refusing to talk about it, or trying our best not to think of it, or even, less controllably, having our brains hide it from us. And a lot of the time, it’s understandable. The past can be pretty fucking awful.
There are large sections of my past that I simply can’t remember. I know things happened, I kinda know what happened, because others tell me, but if you asked me to give a memory from the time period, I could probably only give vague memories, if you could even get me to explain those. Sometimes I wonder what I might learn if I knew about those times. But to be honest, most of the time I think that I’m probably better off having that part of the past hidden from my consciousness.
One time I recalled how events went down between a friend of mine and suddenly I realized it was different than how I had been thinking of it. That shift in memory radically altered my perspective of reality, and, to be honest, I felt scared. It was scary that apparently, I don’t actually have that much control over my memory. And that my memory has so much control over my perception of reality. I realized that it wasn’t just the past that was scary, but it was my memory.
Even as we fear the past, we also romanticize it. We endlessly indulge in nostalgia, think about the “good ol’ days,” wish we had the luxuries we had then, or at least wish we thought the world was so much simpler.
I’ve come to realize that the same lack of control that I fear is what drives my nostalgia. I think of the past and I don’t see what it was actually like. I see what I kinda wished it was. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes, it was pretty good. But other times, I know that I am happy to live the life I have now.
Nostalgia is such a strange emotion. It creates sadness, envy, happiness, loneliness, and so much more. It is such a complex feeling and I am unsurprised at what a grip it seems to have on our society. Nostalgia is desperate, it’s needy, it’s cloying. If we let it, it will consume us.
I said before that was my fear of a lack of control drives my nostalgia. But I think it’s equally true that my nostalgia at times drives my fear of a lack of control. Not of recalling the past, but of the future.
I’ve come to realize that “The Past” isn’t actually a static thing, in the sense that we view it objectively. Rather, it’s a construction of our minds, of our perception, of our memory. Sure, events in a specific and objective way occurred, but that isn’t actually what we think of when we think of The Past.
Similarly, “The Future” isn’t a static thing. But more literally in this case—the future doesn’t exist, only what we think of the future exists. And I think that just as how our mind alters “The Past” (our perception of past events) through memory, our mind constructs “The Future” (our perception of future events) through The Past. And I think that ultimately means we presume what was will continue to be.
Here’s an example. When I was 14-almost-15-years-old, believing myself to be a femboy, I talked to a close friend about how, at the age of 4, I remember always blowing on dandelions wishing I was like Ponyo (a girl character from Studio Ghibli’s film Ponyo). In this case, I had that true memory, but my perception of it was based on the present. I said to my friend something along the lines of, “My 4-year-old brain just knew I wanted to be feminine, it had no concept of gender.” From that, my mind constructed a vision of the future where me living as who I want to be would be living as a femboy (in case you’re new here, I’m a trans woman).
Now, I still maintain this to be a valid analysis, but I no longer agree with it. To me, that memory was more simply just me wishing I was a character that gave me gender envy, wishing I was read as a girl. And my present perception of that past leads me to construct a future where me living as who I want to be would be living as a transfem person/woman.
After I decided I wasn’t a femboy and tried to perform masculinity for half a year, my mind basically just hid that memory from me. I honestly forgot about it for like a year after that. Essentially, it altered “The Past” to justify my perception of the present and future. I’m guessing a lot of trans people have an experience like that. It’s a simple example, but I hope it illustrates my point effectively.
Recently, I’ve been thinking more about the future, especially because of the contemporary administration. Having to draft backup plans and “in-case-of-emergency”s and considering every possible avenue through which I will be targeted. But also just because I’m in a very transitionary stage of my life, with school, college, and more. Right now, I constantly think to the future, and I quite frankly have no idea where it will go.
And in this moment in particular, the biases I have feel so much more pronounced, because it is so much more significant.
When I was applying to colleges in High School, I only applied to two. My logical justification was that “Oh, they’re the only one’s I’d consider going to. If I don’t get in, I probably will just start out at community college.” But when I actually did get in, all of a sudden I realized it wasn’t even what I wanted. I think part of me hoped I didn’t get in, that way I’d have a justification for taking the “easy” and “safe” route. Even the colleges I applied to were absolutely the “safe” route, one was the place a close friend of mine whom I looked up to had gone, and the other was just a prestigious university that I had been exposed to for all my life. And when I look back, there was an obvious reason why I didn’t apply anywhere else. It was because they didn’t exist in my past. They were New, Different, and therefore Scary.
Because really, the future isn’t just something we construct in accordance with the past. It’s something that only exists in relation to the past. If The Past didn’t exist, then The Future wouldn’t either. Which is strange, because, isn’t the future supposed to be, to some extent, unbounded by the past? Fresh start, and all that. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever even considered the possibility of a fresh start. The idea is very alien to me.
I remember reading about how, in a lot of past societies, it was pretty common for people (younger people, mostly) to just straight up leave their family, their friends, everyone they had known, and move far away and start a new life with some new people. (If you want a citation, it was probably The Dawn of Everything but this isn’t an academic writing, so I don’t care too much.) Similarly, I’ve heard of trans people who transition to passing, then leave everything they ever knew and start a new life where nobody knows they’re transgender. I just think it’s fascinating.
To be honest, I think it would take a lot in my life to change for me to do that. But entertaining the possibility of a future where My Past doesn’t exist is tantalizing. To do exactly what my brain seems to have done for a lot of my life and just do it to everything. To take every lesson I’ve ever learned, and ditch everything I learned them from. I was thinking earlier about the worst case scenario, like if they start up death camps for transgender people or whatever. At that point, I’d have no choice but to start over somewhere else. And that would fucking suck.
I don’t really think there’s any way to erase your past. It always will exist, in the back of your mind, taunting you, jeering at you, making its presence known. And those events will always have happened to someone, especially if that someone is you. But, I suppose, maybe the lesson here is that allowing that past to bind and control your future is a mistake.
I think we can escape the past without erasing it. We can leave its comfort, its safety, its determinism, its demands, and still tell the people closest to us about it. When I tell my loved ones things about my past that I’d, quite frankly, sometimes rather forget, it feels freeing. When I reject the past and choose my own way, when I choose the new, the scary, the different, when I decide to functionally start anew by abandoning everything my brain tells me the future must be and instead deciding what my future will be, that is when I escape my past. I don’t need to forget anything to do that. Finding the courage to do this is difficult, but it is a necessary difficulty.
When I faced myself and admitted to myself that regardless of everything that I said to myself or to others, everything I had ever done or had done to me, regardless of past, present, or future, I would carve out my own future and transition, that was the moment that the future was mine. But this is not an all-or-nothing act. This is a continuous project. It is a constant commitment to choosing one’s own future, regardless of one’s past.