“The thing is, I’ve tried to leave that person behind, the person I used to be. It’s not a gender transition thing or anything like that. I just got to a dark place and tried to make a clean break from that life. If I told you all the stuff I did, you wouldn’t like me as much. And it’s not cool stuff like robbing banks or selling drugs, it’s mean and petty and gross stuff.”
“When we met, you asked me if sometimes, out of the blue, I’ll cringe at a thing I did or said years ago. Is that what you were talking about? You lay awake and think about all the people you screwed over? Torture yourself with it?”
There was another pause, and she watched the desert roll by as if painful lowlights from her life were playing outside the window.
“I think,” she said, “I caused so many people so much pain for so little reason that my brain can’t hold it all. I finally realized I couldn’t move on, couldn’t live my life unless I just rebooted myself. I think that should be a basic human right, don’t you? To denounce your past? Even if there are records of it online, you should be able to say, ‘I’m sorry and I’ve grown,’ and everyone should judge you based on how you act from then on. If somebody goes mining into your past for stuff to bring you down or embarrass you, they should be treated like the bad guy.”
“But you know that’s not how it works, right?”
“Oh, trust me. I know.”
“Because people are going to preserve that version of you, from the part of your life when they felt the most superior to you.”