The Queer Stories

07. Stream of Conscience

"You can't seriously feel guilty for all the things you've done! It's not what guilty feelings are intended for."

This is what she said to her colleague, May. Although, she wasn't sure what she meant by that particular sentence she had just said. She wasn't sure how it made any sense. But May didn't question it.

"I know! It feels like an endless torture! Sigh..."

But she knew what May was talking about. She knew exactly how it felt, like endless torture. On the other hand, she also knew that it would be futile to say anything about it. Nothing could stop it. The guilty feelings couldn't be stopped.

"To be honest with you, sometimes I do have guilty feelings, too. A lot of them."

"Oh really? About what?" May asked with curiosity.

"About a lot of things, just like you."

"Like..., for example?"

"Like, about Susan, my parents, and many others... About what I did and what I said..., really, pretty much like what you just told me, those little things."

She made an attempt to explain her guilty feelings in an ambiguous way. She didn't know what details she should give.

"I hope it's not as bad as mine." May gave a wry smile. "I guarantee you, this isn't the kind of competition that you want to win."

Knowing each other for almost two years, she and May didn't become friends until a few months ago when they started collaborating on a project called Jumpler. They went out for lunch frequently, and May started telling her everything, literally everything about her life. This was probably the first time she listened to one single person's troubles and worries in so much depth.

She did have empathy and sympathy for her, but after all she wasn't May. Originally from a Chinese family in Southeast Asia, May worked very hard to save money and got a master's degree in the United States, and then married an American guy after graduation, and now maintained a rather complicated love hate relationship with her parents. It was totally different from her own life and she couldn't entirely comprehend or relate to it.

But she was very familiar with the guilty feelings May was referring to. She knew precisely how it felt.

A while ago she heard from Susan, her life partner, a high school teacher, that a new teacher at school had made a mistake. Instead of stream of consciousness, she wrote "stream of conscience" on the board. Students jeered behind her back and then everybody at school knew. At first, she laughed at the new teacher with Susan, but very soon she started to feel differently. Stream of conscience, what an interesting term. She couldn't stop thinking about it ever since she heard of it..., perhaps something was subconsciously triggered. And that was the beginning of her endless guilt trip.

It was like it put in motion a domino effect that affected no one else but her. She started to feel guilty about lots of things, one by one. Flashbacks, fragments of memories, all of a sudden they flooded back to her mind, at times even chronologically.

She couldn't remember clearly, but she believed it was in kindergarten, she hurt herself by accident and was afraid the adults might yell at her for it, so she lied and said the boy next to her pushed her. That little boy was punished. Now she felt so guilty about it. That boy must have suffered a huge impact from the injustice.

High school was harsh..., especially for those who got bullied by her and her friends. She wasn't the leader of the gang but surely participated in or at least encouraged the bullying activities. And in college she was such a bitch, she manipulated a few guys in order to get whatever she wanted from them. Those weren't the memories she was proud of, yet somehow they came back to her without any warning.