Fall is coming soon.

Texas is still hot. I almost didn’t realize the season was changing until the leaves fell on my car’s window. This hellish temperature is only bearable because I was trained in Vietnam, where the tropical humidity turns the nation into a giant sauna. It’s uncomfortable, but it is also nostalgically endearing.

I will return to college soon. Looking back, this summer was more memorable than previous ones, but it was not what I had hoped for.

I spent my summer searching for a source of inspiration for my own actions. Some of those moments happened sporadically, while others were an ugly reflection of myself against other people’s lives. I tried to rationalize every single question my brain gave out, tried to push myself into doing everything possible, and tried to reassess all my social interactions. But one thing was clear: the more I did these things, the worse my mood became. I feel like this body is betraying me, like a foreign heart being attacked by its own immune system.

After learning about who I am, I’m at a point where my past seems unfamiliar, yet I can’t bring myself to fully accept my current self.

Who was in “my past”?

K was cheerful. K was kind. K excelled at everything. K was supposed to be the big brother who would make the family proud in the future.

I don’t know if anyone listened to K.

Did you hear K cry? Did you hear when he was serious about something, but you thought a child’s opinions didn’t matter? Did you ever hear what was wrong with him, or was it already too late when he started to underperform at school: the only thing you told him to focus on?

I did. I could hear K. K couldn’t hear me, though.

I wonder if I was controlling K all this time. I wonder if I was stealing the family’s “baby boy” away from them. I wonder if, when the day comes that I modify this body and can finally be happy about myself, it will mean I have chosen to mutilate K. Will it mean that I benefit myself at the expense of K? Would I be considered a heartless monster, a grotesque excuse for a human, or a parasite, because I used a body that was not mine to find what is mine?

Do I deserve punishment?

My life would be granted as the death of another human being. K would soon disappear without a trace, but his travel history, birth certificate, and family members will remain. I will have to live in his body to find the version of myself that is “right”: the version that I couldn’t be born into because they were expecting K, not me.

Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to be here.

I do wonder what would have happened if I were born a girl instead. Would they have told me to stop focusing on studying, learn to help around the house, and marry a man instead? Would I have to worry about going out at night because of the fear of getting assaulted? Would I have been pushed back against when I expressed my wish to study internationally, because I couldn’t make it as a girl? Possibly, but I also know that I would have had a childhood: my childhood, which I could be happy about. It could be that by leeching onto K, I piggybacked through the privileged life of a man so that I could go somewhere else and find myself.

Even when I can finally be myself, will I even be considered human? Or is it true that I’m just a killer?

Sooner or later, K’s body will be replaced. One by one, like Frankenstein. K will have to endure this, because after all, he has no say in the matter. It’s me who controls his body, his life, his actions, and everything that belongs to him.

I’m no less than a criminal. The difference is there will be no blood, no corpse, no evidence, only tears. But I can still get persecuted, not because of murder, but because of who I am.

That’s why I don’t think I had a childhood. I don’t think it was meant for me.

It’s possible that this heat is driving me crazy. This summer was better than previous summers, but I achieved nothing.

Maybe next year. Maybe.

“Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way
Anything that may desert you
So it cannot hurt you
You only have to look behind you
At who′s undermined you
Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way

Everything you touch you don’t feel
Do not know what you steal
Shakes your hand
Takes your gun
Walks you out of the sun
What you touch you don′t feel
Do not know what you steal
Destroy everything you touch today
Please destroy me this way.”

– Ladytron, Destroy Everything You Touch. 2005.