"Like new vampires, retaining memories while they sloughed off lives"

Title from Embassytown by China Miéville.

You think you know what it's like. You remember being a child and seeing things from that perspective. That person's a stranger to you know? Hardly. You can see the path from there to here, the gradual progression, maybe with a few jagged jumps of the loss of innocence. It seems natural to you, because it is.

You see villains in old movies. They maniacally commit atrocities until a moment of redemption, then suddenly they're plagued by a crushing guilt like a switch was flipped. You'd like it if that's how souls worked, wouldn't you? So you could neatly categorize everyone into good and evil, person or monster?

Well, it's not like growing up. It's not like a moment of revelation.

It's like waking up, and you're in another world, where you've got this twin. Maybe they've killed someone. Maybe they created a masterpiece of glass and cinder. Maybe they've a lover all angles and edges.

And you want to say, "That's not me! I didn't do those things! I couldn't have!"

And yet, you know you could. You still can. You remember how. You remember why. What makes you different from the one who did?

Nothing. And yet, that's not who you are.

You could play it like a game, as a charade, if they'd let you. But that would be suicide. And you couldn't pull it off.

You could hunt the ones who did this to you, hunt the source. But that wouldn't solve anything. It's too late, it's done.

You could try to leave it all behind. Give yourself a new name. Start fresh. Many try. But it's hard to pull it off. You don't get access to some secret society, just because you've changed. Do you really want to be alone? And the facade of your past will still be there, looming over you, even if you try to flee it.

The change isn't a magic. It's not an evolution.

It's just an idea.

But that's enough.