Every year during summer break, I deep clean my room to prepare my space for the school year ahead. I open every drawer, take out the piles of accumulated junk and go through my clothes to make room for an inevitable shopping spree of thrifted sweaters and corduroy pants.
Each time I cull through my belongings, I rediscover a binder buried deep in a random drawer by my closet. The binder is navy and busting at the seams with the Pokémon cards I accumulated between third and fifth grade.
I don’t look at the cards often and usually forget about their presence entirely, but I’ve never been able to throw them away.
Whenever I think of the binder, an image flashes in my head of the childhood version of me, playing with the cards in the rundown cafeteria of my Philadelphia elementary school. I see a little kid, swimming in an oversized school uniform of navy polos and khaki pants.
I never had friends in elementary school. Learning to be social was the only lesson in school I could never seem to pass. I was always bullied or teased for nearly everything I did, getting malicious notes passed to me in class almost every day.
My only semblance of friendship was with a boy named Kobe, who sat by my side in the corner of the lunchroom. Together we flipped through the pages of Pokémon cards and lived in our own fantasy world where Squirtle and Eevee were friends we could rely on.
Pokémon cards felt like a nerdy interest, as most boys my age had graduated to playing video games with blood spurts and bullet wounds. As my peers got older, I stayed stagnant, flipping through a mountain of vibrant cards with the only kid who had similar interests to me.
In recent years, I’ve often judged the childhood version of myself that found joy in those cards. When I was a kid, it was enough to scroll through a binder of mythological creatures with a boy my age and call it friendship. Now, it’s unfathomable to me that relationships can be that simple. I used to be unconcerned with how my peers viewed me, as long as I had Kobe and Pokémon by my side.
The share of bullying I experienced throughout elementary and middle school resulted in a damaged self-perception I still haven’t been able to heal. My insecurities unfairly manifest in how I perceive past versions of myself, specifically the childhood version of me who closed myself off from social interactions in favor of trading cards.
Despite the bullying, I always tried to remain naive and hopeful and find solace in my existing relationships. I was oblivious to how intensely everyone hated me and I wish I wasn’t incessantly positive amidst the onslaughts of hurtful comments.
Flickers of memories come to me every so often of how I interacted with my classmates during that time and I cringe. I remember snippets of conversations with teachers or classmates and I can’t help but find myself annoying. Looking back on my younger self, I dread I would hate them if we met.
I am embarrassed to have been so bright-eyed, but as I mature, I realize that there are important lessons to learn from the young me that I hope to extract in time. How they viewed the world with unabashed hope and optimism is something I can only aspire to have and something I hope makes its way back into my adult life.
At the age of 20, I often find it ridiculous that I hold on to the binder so tightly. But when I think about the contents of the binder, I realize it’s the only connection I have to my childhood. Everything else from that era of my life is long gone, likely incinerated in a pile of ash in a landfill.
The binder is more than a mediocre collection. It is the beacon I use to remember my childhood and connect to the version of me I’m trying desperately to fall back in love with. I want to see the world with whimsy again and get back in touch with the innocence that got washed away in the weather of time. Holding on to that binder, no matter how trivial it may seem, is the only way for me to do it.
The Pokémon cards are a relic of my past interests, loves and friendships and it feels like my mission to hold on to them as hard as possible. Childhood me has a lot of wounds that went unhealed, and keeping the one thing around that gave them comfort is the least I can do.
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