Monday, November 25, 2013

Making my childhood a crime, and me a criminal!

        I know that seems a bit overly dramatic, and it is, kinda.  The circumstances surrounding my childhood are the perfect slip through the cracks, that just leaves people wondering.  Whats funny from my perspective is I had no clue till everyone told me.  Did I live the Norman Rockwell painting, not exactly. My father took his own life when I was 3, I was a latchkey kid by 5.  Before I turned 9 and moved across the country to start a new life I had no clue people thought my home was messed up.  I was in gifted classes, my Mom though not around all the time was there when really needed to be the support, or the encouragement, or the hammer.  It wasn't till I was in a place where 2 parents were expected did I even give my own situation a thought.  It still didn't make a dent, as I was by 11 or 12 watching other peoples children, so how bad could my upbringing have been if other people felt I was worthy of taking care of their kids.  Of course this only lasted a few years till I got tired of watching the kids while my friends did other things. By about 15 I was moved on, by 17 I more or less had my own condo.  Mom paid the bills, but she wasn't there very often, sometimes I would avoid her for as long as 2 months.  I was never alone, my house became the place for the lost boys. We became wanna be skater punks, I say wanna be as we were never mean.  Never really wanted to do harm, we just were discovering who we were, and our boundaries were of our own making.
        What most people couldn't believe was where I stopped. Before I turned 18 I had not had intercourse, had only tried pot and didn't care for it, and had taken alcohol to where it already told me it was a nasty drug to be used carefully.  How am I supposed to feel when my childhood is looked upon with a mixture of sadness, sorrow, and sometimes incredulity. When I wouldn't change a thing, my whole life everyone has told me that the physical is fleeting.  I believed them, I went looking for intangible, it finds you.  So maybe if you look at someone as having something to say, maybe you might want to ease up on what they needed to go through to learn it.

Jack

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