As interested as I am in the Freudian theory that most of our adult emotions, perspectives, reactions, and nuances stem from long submerged childhood experiences, I have a difficult time putting that interest into practice. I'm sure Freud is right; my past certainly does dictate a great deal of my present, but I have a hard time doing the work of examining my childhood. I don't feel a great amount of nostalgia for my childhood; in fact, if I'm being brutally honest, I find the romancing of childhood influence and memory rather cliche. This reaction isn't born of a bad upbringing, quite the contrary; I had, by most standards, an extremely blessed childhood: married parents, close siblings, animals to care for, toys to play with, healthy food, birthday presents and play dates and family vacations and warm beds and lullabies. I was rarely punished, nor was I overly spoiled. I respected my parents and genuinely loved them. I genuinely loved (love) my sisters. I suppose my disinterest in the deep analysis of my childhood might stem from the very fact that it was a good childhood; I don't want to color something pure with too much interpretation; I'd rather just let what was, be what it was.
As such, when I was sitting down to practice Gratitude Month, week one, in which I'm asked to recall and give thanks for a specific childhood influence, I found myself coming up dry. As a blanket statement, I will say: I am thankful--immensely, forevermore--for every single influence of my childhood. For every kind hand, word, action, deed, and gift that, for some miraculous act of random blessing, I was bestowed with. It is easy to look upon my childhood with simplicity and gratitude. Deed done. Where I have a bit more trouble, when focusing my gratitude towards the past, is in giving thanks for the girl I was at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. The girl I was when I was deep in the heart of the worst place of being young--the terrible, wrenching, lonely, self-loathing place called 'Awkward'.
I sometimes joke about this time with my sisters, saying that my 'awkward phase' lasted from about age ten until twenty-two, and while it's undoubtedly true that I have spent the majority of my life feeling 'awkward' in one way or another, my true period of teenage angst only recalls itself as lasting because its contours were so sharp and gritty; I've long been tattooed up with the humiliations of that time, and while the marks have faded, they remain as a reminder that many of my adult sufferings stem not from the submerged terrors of a four or five year old, getting lost in a grocery store, but from my thirteen and fourteen year old self, desperate to pass the age-old high school test of survival.
It seemed fitting, then, to devote a bit of page space to the girl who causes me the greatest grimace, as I feel it is high time that she be forgiven for not knowing what she was not required to know at such a time: that living is more--ought to be more--than an exhausting hustle to be liked. This is her:
Bad haircut. Acne. An obsession with Leonardo DiCaprio. An ancient Bruce Springsteen cassette in the tape deck. Makeup that she doesn't know how to use. An older sister she is desperately envious of. A little sister who still wants her to play Barbie. A crush on the same old boy--the soccer player, the leader of the pack.
The year I am thirteen, my grandmother is living in our house. She is dying. Her heart is failing her. Her hospital bed and tray of medication, her oxygen machine, fill one room. At night there are nurses who sit up and listen for her call so my mother, consumed by grief, can attempt an hours sleep. My older sister has her license and goes out driving; her hair is long; she has friends. My little sister is five; I still sometimes play with her, setting up tiny houses with plastic furniture and calling our mother in to look at our interior design skills. It is a dark winter. The year I am thirteen, I go to see Titanic a total of eight times. A movie ticket--at night--is five dollars. I use up all of my allowances. I beg my mother to take me. My father. I drag along my best friend Megan, who is unimpressed. I hate my hair. My skin. My clothes. I want to be like my older sister. The house where I live does its best to emulate its normal loving aura, but the truth of it is dying, and eventually death, and all the living that we're required to do after. My mother kept living, through and after her grief; we all kept living, but it's no wonder that there are whole segments of that time--months--that hold no clear memory for me.
Last night I went to see Titanic again, in the movie theater. The ticket was eleven dollars. My little sister, who is now nearly twenty, went with me. We joked as we drove to the theater; remember how many times you went to see it when it first came out? I laughed at the girl I used to be; I rolled my eyes at her adolescent naivety. Sitting in the theater though, I found myself pulled back to that long ago dark winter, and I found that I could recall, with surprising clarity, what it had felt like to escape from the house to the movie theater; I could recall the rough fabric on the seat cushions; the stick of shoe sole to dried soda; the way I could escape, could hide myself, for a few hours, in story.
I didn't consider writing as an actual pursuit until much later in my life, but when I think about it, when I am forced to pause and remember, I see that I have been writing--I have been seeking the escape of story--all my life: writing poorly worded fairy tales on legal pads in the catacombs of the public library while I waited for my mother to finish her shift at the reference desk; writing horribly cliched poems that seemed all-powerful for my high school English classes; filling journal page after journal page with my latest demoralizing angst or fleeting swell of hopefulness. It is when I recall my life thus far in this vein, that I am apt to look upon the awkward, thirteen-year-old girl in the movie theater with forgiveness. Gratitude. Thank you, I want to say, for knowing that what we needed then, in the midst of deep sorrow, was a good story. Over and over again.
Thanks for reading. (This was a long one.)
Beth
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