“It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
This is probably one of my most favorite quotes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It definitely is one of the books that hold different meanings depending on the reader’s perspective. I only once saw Alice as a children’s book filled with whimsical and nonsensical childish imagination. As I reread it again anyone can relate to all different parts of Alice and still enjoy it no matter the stage in life the reader is in.
This quote spoke to me at a time in my life when I had some sort of identity crisis. Being a Filipina, being a woman, being a wife, a daughter, a sister, a person. Those parts of me never made any sense. I didn’t know what any of those mean for me and it took a lot of trial and error. As a teenager, there was this phase of perfection that I needed to be. The perfect student, but never studied. The perfect girl, but was not sociable. The perfect friend, but the quiet one. I was deep inside very imperfect and I hated it. I was a bitch but presented myself as everyone’s friend. Until I needed something I want.
As a 20 something, I continued to try and be perfect but I met someone who cared for the opposite. He was not moved by any of my bullshit and I couldn’t pretend around him at all. I acted like I had all the problems in the world so he’d empathized. He didn’t. There were more problems in the world that needed better attention than my whining. At 20, I lived by myself but was so unprepared for that life that I was so disappointed to see my imperfection. I started to hate myself. It was here that this quote sparked so much meaning in my life.
In the later years of my 20s. I look back at myself and saw the best and worst of my life. As I begin anew, I could never explain who I am because I felt so different from before to who I was becoming. She wanted to jump high but she had no tools nor idea how to fly. Nobody can fly, though. Now I am faced with reality that in order to go that high, I need to keep myself grounded, prepared, healthy, and well-balanced before I can climb up to the highest I could go. I know now that I need a ladder because I don’t have wings. I’m still at the bottom part of that ladder. But I’ve started, and there’s no going back to yesterday.
