I Go Back To Childhood

My childhood wasn’t something I am proud of or happy to remember. It was a revolving door of scenes, pictures and mini movies that haunt my mind. The majority was spent in my mother’s trailer, a thin white stretch of house with black trim. For part of my life there was a blue shed falling apart in the back yard, and then later there was one built off to the side of the yard, that protective plastic on the wood never taken off and starting to peel as years went by. There was a little blue dog house with black shingles that housed the best friend I had ever known as a child. You would see a smaller version of me climbing all over that dog at any point, clutching his fur while I was huddled inside the small musty smelling wooden house, and I could taste nothing but salty tears. He was always patient though, letting me hold him, and then when I could no longer fit inside, I would sit on the sloped roof and cry, my faithful Max sitting down at my feet and waiting for my sadness to leave. There was another dog, a big boxy rottweiler who let me sit on his not sloped roof and jumped up to comfort me while I cried. Sometimes when I had run outside to cry you could her my mom yelling at me about it, how I had nothing to cry about, I was just being dramatic; can you feel those words pierce my heart like I can?

In the trailer, you would see the revolving of bedrooms I went through, I began sharing a room with my sister, the smell of melted crayons that we giggled over the heater, the cold metal of a futon bunk bed. We would play with barbies, and we would dance around and sing to the radio. Then you would see me alone in the big room while my sister was in the small one, and then she was back in mine. We would be in the small room, squished together while a family of five lived in the big one together, and then sometimes the small room would be a playroom with a tv, a sewing machine where I learned to make pillows, a computer where I would spend countless hours playing After Dark Games and fostering a love for solitaire that would follow me into adulthood, despite how much is annoys my fiancée. You would eventually see me sitting in that room, the walls decorated only in pale purple paint, the only things in the room, a bed (one pillow, one blanket), a silver radio on the floor and a borrowed book in my hands. If you opened the large bureau, you would find a simple week’s worth of clothes. It probably feels cold in that room, in the way a room feels cold because it is sterile. If you ask me why my room was barren and empty, I will tell you that everything got taken away because I didn’t tattle on my sister for stealing from our mother. I would then walk you down the hall to my sister’s room, where she wouldn’t be affected by the punishment in the slightest. Maybe you would frown and wonder how someone could be so cruel to a child, but this is just another day for me.

You would see me tiptoeing through a sea of bodies strewn about the living room floor, coming from where I probably had to squish into my sister’s bed with her while someone else borrowed my room. I would navigate them with ease, plenty of practice stepping over the people I might have stayed up late with last night. There would most likely be a mess still left out, card games on the table, empty coffee brandy cups still giving off the odd scent of “Adult chocolate milk”. You would see me grab a bowl of cereal and if there was no milk left, I would fill the bowl with water to wet the crunchy colorful sugar pieces. I would eat as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb my mother’s friends; friends my mother wouldn’t keep her whole life. People went almost as quickly as they came for the majority of my life. Sometimes they would live with us, and I still remember names and faces. You could see me getting close to some, and you would see me heartbroken when they left, you would see me clutching a stuffed puffin close and singing Pink into the little recorder while I cried the night one of them was taken to jail. I wouldn’t get in trouble for swearing, just that once.

There are so many scenes I want to show you, and just thinking about it is hard to come to terms with. I want you to smell the stale smoke that clung to everything, the must of the dogs I would bury my head into when I needed a shoulder I would never get from my parents. But I also want you to smell the sweetness of baking cookies at Christmas time, the sharp bubble of my favorite apple cider when we would all get together for the holidays.

Sometimes, as you walked through my life, you might see things being thrown at me, whizzing by my face to loudly hit the wall. You could see the array of broken wooden spoons and hair brushes littering the kitchen floor. The countless bloody noses from the dry air, or from something that was thrown actually connecting with my face. If you asked me now, that I am older and wiser, I would tell you I was clearly abused, but the child you’re looking at in these scenes doesn’t know much better. She knows it as punishment, albeit unfair, because her sister is never given the same severity. She feels like she deserves the sharp words flung through the air, she deserves not being protected, abandoned to her own devices at 8 years old. If you asked me now, I know that’s not true, not in the slightest, but if you ask her, well, the red flags just look like flags through rose colored glasses, right?

The peaceful moments, the ones I am afraid to lose; are when you’ll see me curled on the couch, a blanket shared between my mother and I as we watch a movie. You’ll see me leave my room early on school days, my step dad and I having a rare moment of calm while I watch my favorite early morning anime and he plays on the computer. Every once in a while, he’ll ask a question, show a little interest, but for the most part he’ll smoke a cigarette and all you hear is the calm clicking of his mouse. I will eat my cereal and be enraptured by the scene on the TV, and all will be well. You’ll see my sister and I huddled around something we’re doing, playing, coloring, you name it. Outside of the house you’ll see my grandparents and I sitting in Governors when I am 14, a broken shell of the child they used to know. This girl sitting here, you probably saw her carefully deconstruct a razor, removing the blade and putting it to her skin. You’d turn to me, but I’m not her anymore and I tell you that, because right now, what you’re watching is the gruff voice of her grandfather. He’s a man of few words, and these could very well be the most important ones he ever says to her.

“You can come live with us, you know?”

You’ll follow her home that night, see the fight with her mother, and see her begin packing, because if she wants to leave, her mother told her she has to do it the very next day.

When you look at me, you won’t see the same little girl as the beginning, and you won’t see the broken teenager that I once was. I grew and changed, and I have my own life now. But I wanted you to see how it was torn down and then the olive branch that saved it. You ask how I survived, and I don’t know. I will tell you I used to count down the people who would be sad if I died, to talk myself out of it, and I was only in single digits then. But I can’t tell you how I survived, I can tell you who helped me live though. I can show you the girl with orange hair who became the rock and sister I needed in high school, even when she left it; I can show you the tall blonde man who became my big brother, and the two best friends I could ever ask for, one of which who put a ring on my finger.

I don’t know how I survived, but I know how I live now, and that’s what matters, right?