Short story… pt. 1

The first step forward is always the hardest. This step is always the one that makes us question our motives, our ability, and even our own grit. Never an easy thing to accomplish, it reminds us to be humble. It reminds us that we are never as good as we have always believed we were in our heads; that in actuality we were weak and easy to figure. In my lifetime I’ve taken numerous first steps, none more important than the one I’m about to take. This step will define all others I will take throughout my entire life.

My story starts where all stories start, a mother who isn’t quite sure of what she’s getting into and a father who I suspect was quite like myself. Unsure of where this adventure would take them, they jumped in head first without first testing the depths. She was 17 and he was 19. Still children and already thinking about creating another. With best intentions creating a future that they could only guess at. I’d like to think that at some point in the process there was love between them, that love created my siblings and I. Although, I can honestly say that I don’t remember my parents ever loving each other.

I don’t remember them holding each other, I don’t remember them ever kissing, I don’t remember ever a warm embrace. My childhood instead felt more like a series of unfortunate events. I remember small apartments and my father always smelling of sawdust and construction, and my mother always being around. I remember our first home and how it was genuinely a home, not just a house, like all the others that would follow would feel. I can say with limited certainty that this is a feeling that comes with youth and does not lend to how the inner workings of my family were actually working.

I remember fights. I remember nights where I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I wanted to be somewhere peaceful, where all I had to worry about was who was going to play basketball on the court the next day and catching bees in plastic bags on a flowering bush on my walk to my elementary school the next morning. I remember all of this, but I don’t remember love. I don’t remember feeling that what I had was secure. I do remember feeling like it would end at any moment and I had to be prepared for it. I had to be ready to watch my family disappear at the drop of a hat.

I remember feeling that this was normal. This was how everyone felt behind closed doors. During the day when we were away from home we smiled and laughed as if it wasn’t there waiting for us, secretly knowing that everyone else was hiding the exact same pain. What I know now is that while there may have been a few other children pretending to smile and laugh like everyone else, I was part of a minority. My assumption was my shield, protecting me from the ugly truth that not everyone is worried that when they get home, their family no longer exists. Returning to something completely different and even though it could possibly be better, it was still not what you called home. Not what you considered your place of peace.

The world was smaller then. Nothing existing outside of playing basketball in the summers until John and I could no longer see the hoop, my tree house in the back yard, and super mario brothers when John couldn’t play or when it was raining. Nothing outside Michael Jordan and the Bulls, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and watching ‘This Old House’ with my Dad every sunday morning. And if these things weren’t available, I always had Ali next door and the tire swing across the street in the neighbor’s yard.

This was my sanctuary and the world didn’t matter. Not only did it not matter but it didn’t exist. I was wholly enclosed in all these things and I didn’t know or care to know there was a world outside of this. That there were people living their lives much as I am now.

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