You ran frantically across a corridor that seemed to branch out into more and more hallways you knew your brain was creating to confuse you. Each room depicted a scene of your childhood or adolescence that ended up becoming the founding stones of the person you were today. At your frantic pace, you caught glimpses of when your uncle took you to his office to cut your pinky, when your grandfather gave you a kiss on the cheek while you both stood on the marble steps of the stairs of the national library. You saw yourself hugging your mom really hard when she told you she was going to get her cervix removed, in a fit of despair because, among the scant things you knew about surgeries, was that they could end up wrong. But you also held her tight in your arms as a way to say thank you for erasing the possibilities of ever having any siblings. You come across yourself much later, when you didn’t hug her—or anyone for that matter—and your thighs bled with something you know felt justified at the time, but only seems like a plot to garner attention in your present moment. You’re in high school, in love with someone you’ve agreed to break up with six months later. You’re in university, away and abroad, abroad and away, and you’re getting drunk with vodka for the first time (both getting drunk and trying vodka) and watching Trixie and Katya (also for the first time). You’re still in university, not quite in love with someone you will break up with over a message two months into the relationship. You’re panting, trying to chase a stop to your old past. In your head, you remember February 18th, the anniversary with the second girl you liked but the first that liked you back. You remember being thirteen, fooling around while The Grinch played in the background. You recall the summer of 2018, when you swore to yourself in the mirror that you would never swear or drink alcohol. You grimace as you think about the summer of 2023, when your mom interrupted your sip of a blue smoothie to chastise you for killing your brain cells with alcohol, even though it was only the second time you got drunk and drank vodka. You put your glass down and took a deep breath, just like you do now, when you bring yourself back to earth and discover that you’re finally standing still, in one piece, resting stationary in between two blank walls. You realize there’s nothing else to look back at, nothing to escape from anymore, and that’s why you stopped. You understand that it’s time to live. Live to find the instances that will shape you in the future. And maybe, in that very instant, maybe you decide to get drunk on vodka for the third time.