Prompt: Write about yourself when you were 7

I’m trying very hard to remember who I once was, who was ‘me’ before ‘me’ became ‘I’. It's a strange experience, rewinding time in your head, and trying to picture a child who is ‘me’ but also ‘her’. The ‘me’ who was seven doesnt exist any more. She didn’t die, nor did she change, she… shifted and morphed and eleven years went by and after ten of them, all of the cells that made her up were replaced entirely with new ones. Does that still make ‘her’ ‘me’? I don’t like not knowing.

What I do know is this, at seven years old there were almost as many different versions of ‘me’ as there are now.

The ‘me’ that is easiest to imagine is not the ‘me’ that ‘I’ remember. This is the me who exists in photos and in stories. My mother says,
"You were so loud"
"You wouldn't stop talking"
"You had happy eyes"
And she starts to cry, these great big bubbly tears "I want my baby back".
I don’t remember being much louder, chattier, or happier than any other kid. It’s like my mother forgot every unique feature I possessed, and was left with a gingerbread child. My mother’s ‘me’ could have been Gretel or Jill or Goldilocks

I don’t remember being talkative, but I do remember deciding to be quiet. I remember lying on the landing with breaths coming in big whooshing puffs, I remember my eyes stinging and my head thumping and no-one coming. I remember the house shaking with slamming doors and yelling so loud so-so-loud and my ears hurt from all the sound and my shoulder hurt from the fall and my throat hurt from the sobs and. No one was coming.

And so I put a hand to my mouth and muffled the cries until they went away and then my ears hurt a little less and I thought
'Alright then. There you go. That feels better than it did before. That's one less sound. '

'She'... 'me' stops existing in photos and stories after that. And though I don’t remember being her perfectly, I can feel her hiding in my chest now.

My mother doesn’t remember what my first word was, my sister’s was Socks.