Halcyon

 I hope not to drag on and on when I recount my childhood, but I love the coming-of-age film that it was. I think it was normal, because nobody has had the same sociological nor psychological experience as anyone else, thus even if I do deem it strange, it being strange is, in fact, what makes it normal.

I won’t wonder about each and every experience I had; though I could go on for hours about the shade of purple of the walls of my first bedroom, and I think there are several instances of recurring imagery or symbolic events that could be poetic. It would be taxing for me, and for you, to endure every crevice of my memory. I will be conservative; yet forthcoming still.

Some of my first and most prominent memories are that of loss. I recall the divorce, despite my parents’ success in sweeping the arguing and the changes under the rug; I remember the split. At the same time, almost, our lovingly overprotective childhood dog Max was given away, her attitude and needs too much for any recently divorced, still-in-college, parent-of-two to keep. But, for a three-year-old, it’s like a knife to the stomach and then an extra twist, even though my parents still got along, and even though life was still yellow. 

My parents tried so much harder than many parents out there do. Especially as single parents, however, things remained difficult, and no one can eliminate every threat. Our first homes as two separate families were cramped and cheap; our sink drains were earwig nests and our clothes borrowed from cousins. But we were happy. My brother and I, separated by three years and connected by a genetic psychiatric disorder, had a mutual love of imagination and backyards. I can’t recall an early memory of playing that wasn’t outside. We liked Tonka trucks and digging up worms and laying on our backs with our limbs in the air, imagining gravity turning off. 

My early years in school were also kind and bright. Because it was such a tiny town, the kids in my age group all knew each other by name and, largely, all liked each other. A few of them were ostracized for being different, but I wasn’t different then. I did say weird things, and struggled with communicating sometimes, but other young kids hardly pick up on awkwardness. I tended to morph into whatever social situation I was in; I wasn’t sure of myself, but easily projected a person that they could like. I remember a budding friendship between me and a boy who was quite the troublemaker; I wanted to impress him and didn’t have any understanding of healthy boundaries. I wanted to know what it was like to kiss a boy, and I remember morphing into his ideal playmate in order to make that happen. 

One day he contrived a plan for us to “prank” another boy, who quite a few allergies, by petting a dog outside the fence and chasing him with our dog hair-infested fingers. After serving our subsequent detentions, my fantasies of kissing were met with a few pecks on my hands. But I was forced to face the consequences of my malleable behaviour as well. I thought I was just playing, in the only way I knew how to play; by not being myself. The only “me” that I knew was an amalgamation of curiosities and exploring. Which I do believe is relatively normal for a kid. But that trait didn’t stop in early childhood.

My mother, having met our soon-to-be stepfather, uprooted my brother and I to a town an hour away when I was going into the fifth grade. I did still have attachments to my old friends, as my father still lived in that town, but I’d be at a new school and thus at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and in a town with a much higher population count at that. But I don’t remember the nerves, so maybe I was okay with it. 

Memories of that first day are confined in two interactions: meeting Zoe, and meeting Brodie. Two oddity kids who took to me quickly, for whatever reason I don’t know, but it was clearly meant to be. Zoe and Brodie, as well as a few others who were similarly different to the majority, shared with me a carefree exploration of our childlike interests. We didn’t much care about the opinions of anyone else, and I think that made us more likeable. We weren’t hated by the other groups of kids, I think they just saw us as proudly nonconformist, in the sense that we weren’t growing into society’s tendency to care about appearances. I tried dating a few times, but most of the boys then weren’t like me at all. They cared about social drama and puberty-related things that I just didn’t understand. That, and I was growing steadily more uncomfortable with my physical presence by the day. Being looked at by people other than my closest friends, like Zoe and Brodie, just felt like I was being instantly misunderstood.

For the two years I lived in that town, most of it was spent roleplaying various novels that we were infatuated with, making shitty home videos and 50-page self-inserted fantasy stories, and renewing my love for freely exploring my surroundings. When Zoe moved away, she was quickly replaced by Kali, who took my place as the “new kid” and took Zoe’s place as the best friend to Brodie and me. Like it was decided by fate, she loved the things that we loved and didn’t look at me like people looked at people. She, like both Zoe and Brodie, looked at me like people look at souls. Truly, I don’t think I’ve ever been known better by anyone but them.