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Page 2: The Tree I Became

When I think about writing my past selves, I’m in a tug-of-war with my memories, trying to choose among the hundreds of versions of me that once existed. Some are long gone. Some are dead and still rotting slowly in the depths of my heart. Some have fused into what “I am” now — the one writing this.

Throughout this, I’m going to strip myself naked and exhibit the art in progress.

Among those hundreds of nameless versions, I chose a handful to transfer to my canvas — the ones that were most memorable, the most impactful, both for me and for others, captured in the pages of my subjective album.

First and foremost, the grove. The individual trees — the ones who gave birth to me, who suffered through intense heat, drowned in floods, who survived and sacrificed. Even from the start, the seed was different. Mutated. Unique within that grove.

He was a clean slate — no chalk marks from the past. A soundboard, echoing what he heard, saw, and felt.

The seed grew into a lush sapling. Then a young plant bearing bright, intense flowers. He offered shade to others, gave shelter. His roots were deep, intertwined with the grove.

Then he was dug up and planted far, far away — in a foreign land, away from the soil he knew. In that place, the young tree froze in winter, burned in summer. His roots struggled against the hard, unwelcoming ground.

They thought he was dead. They nearly cut him down. But when the saw touched him, he felt pain — because beneath the rot, he was still alive.

Over time, he grew older. Sank roots like anchors. That hard ground, once alien, made him stand taller through erosion.

He became a different species, with characteristics unfamiliar to his grove. He shed the names they gave him. He formed his own identity.

All those versions of him stood strong in their own beliefs. The seed believed in cause. The sapling believed in eternal truth. The young tree believed in coincidence — sometimes in nothing at all.

That tree is me — a new species, bearing fruit that is authentic and uniquely mine. I accept the inherent meaninglessness of life on this absurd highway — and still try to make meaning within my existence.

I know this tree isn’t my final form. He’ll evolve again. Maybe even transcend.

That’s what I call my art — woven through the threads of my identity, my questions, my feelings, my journey, and my answers.

My magnum opus.

Introspection, you are my friend and my enemy. You deserve both heaven and hell. You will be venerated, and you will be damned.

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Sylvia Plath, aged 25, from "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath" (dated March 8, 1958)

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Page 1: My Magnum Opus

Slowly, slowly, I am realizing the art of life and the artistry in living on this mysterious black canvas.

It is beautiful in one sense and haunting in another. With every sunset, I begin to lose this fragile identity of mine. It’s drifting farther and farther away from me. It often makes me question: What am I? Who am I? Where do I belong? Did I ever have an identity to begin with?

The more I try to understand myself, the more “I”

becomes hollow.

It comes to me at night. The ocean of musings, in friendship with sorrow and freedom. No textbooks or teachers can teach you this heavenly piece of art called life. We are all artists in strange ways. We craft this deeply personal masterpiece by the name Life.

In my artistry, I’ve come to understand: words are my weapon, the one that will help me craft my magnum opus. My organon, my sacred tool, touches souls with it, gives warmth, tears hearts, and shatters lives. I use my mighty strength more often for the latter than the former. Solitude floods my brain with bright light and casts the shadow of my past. The strokes of darkness shape my shadow from that light.

Now I understand the strength of my weapon, my tool: the words, the language, the expression. Like any other tool, it’s powerful enough to build a castle from scratch and to tear everything down to dust, like the Tower of Babel.

In this darkest bright hour, I see the shades. I hear the melodies. I touch the sculpture, and I feel the artistic vision. What stopped me from opening up my expressive heart all this time? Why did I keep the rusted chain tightly wrapped around it?

Misunderstandings. Rejections. The fear of being hated and left out.

What made me misunderstood?

The very art I crafted wasn’t authentic; my art was misleading.

Why was I rejected?

Because my organon tore everything down to the ground, rather than building, or even becoming, a tool of glory.

I met him, precisely speaking, last weekend. The core “me” I was searching for all this time. The one I thought I lost months ago. He filled and poured essence into the hollow, empty space within “I.” He talked to me. He never left me. I was the one who left him, abandoned him in the abyss. He was there all this time, like a shadow calling me, reminding me of what I’d become. Now I understand how we are both different, but the same.

Everything I did made me depart from me, and now made me arrive in “me.”