My childhood

I was born to a pair of wonderful people who, though fit candidates for parenting, did not find themselves in the right place and time to be the caretakers I often wished they could have been.
Much like my older sister, I was accidental. My parents often say she got the short end of the stick since they were too young and did not 'have their shit together' when she was born, but to be quite honest, I don't think they really had their shit together by the time they had me either.

My first memory is a cosy but scary one. I'm lying in bed, door open, warm bedsheets pulled midway right under my armpits, and I'm drinking milk with honey out of my nursing bottle. However, one detail sticks out. I distinctly remember the logo on my bottle, an upside down triangle with a diagonal blue line next to it, and the numbers drawn on it. They always had to be facing up before I had my nightly milk, else something bad might happen, I feared.
I barely remember any events from my childhood, all I find is a blurry mess speckled with seemingly unimportant snippets of my life like a videotape covered in dirt. My existence feels foreign to me at times, as the few memories I preserve are either revived from other's storytelling or are moments few and far that make my head hurt when I focus on them too much, my brain a complaining librarian fussed about me asking for the books on the tallest of shelves.

My childhood was an uneasy one.

My family did their best to be good to me but my parents were (and still are) overworked to exhaustion and never had the time to take care of themselves at times, let alone raise me and teach me how to be a person.
My sister is a complicated figure. I remember praying she was never born at times and praying she would die or disappear or move out. Unlike me, she did not deal well with being stuck home all day every day and not be allowed to have friends over as to 'not disturb mom while she works' and not be allowed to go to friend's houses either as to 'not bother other families, or else they'll ask for favours we cant fulfill' and not be allowed to make noise, watch tv with the volume on, go out by herself because she's to young, take things from the fridge without asking, and many more restrictions. This lead to me being her only company. I always prefered being alone or being at my neighbour's (more on that later) so she eventually started taking out her frustrations on me. Sometimes physically, sometimes verbally.
There was one occasion I will not forget though. I was inside my room, speaking to myself, daydreaming, dancing to my own scatting, as I usually did in secret back then, when I heard a rustle on my door. I ignored it. I always ignore things and pretend they're not there unless they directly affect me. I needed to use the restroom so I tried to go out of my room. I couldn't leave. The door would not budge, but my door had no keyhole so it couldn't be locked. I pushed, and pulled, and pushed, and banged and punched and kicked the door and it refused to open under my 8 year old strength. I did not know what else to do other than stay inside and keep quiet because I knew I could not disturb my mom while she was working. I was a good kid and I had to be better than my sister so I had to follow the rules.
I waited. I kept daydreaming but it was harder and harder to ignore my physiological needs as time kept passing, every second seemingly going slower as the excrutiating urge to pee got stronger. I got to a point where I couldn't hold it any longer and I did the most shameful thing I could, in my young head, do. I peed myself. I peed on the floor. I cried.
I was too ashamed to move and stand up and look at what I had done so I stayed there and waited, just as I had done until then, except now I was rythmically banging my head against the wall, embarrased. Eventually, I heard the rustle on my door again. I didn't take the opportunity to immediately leave the room. Instead, I changed my clothes, afraid to be seen, and waited untill the footsteps outside came to a halt to rush to the kitchen for the right paper to clean my mess.
Nothing was said of that event until a few days later, when I asked my sister why she had done that. She said she put a broom in front of my door because she was bored. Because she was bored. Those words have stuck with me. To think someone would willingly cause such suffering out of "boredom", though I doubt that was truly the case. Even though we didn't speak much, it didn't take a genious to know she was a troubled kid as well.

Another snippet I have is of rolling cigarretes for my elderly neighbour while he argued with his wife. The smell of tobacco, sweat, freshly fried french fries and sunny-side-ups with a side of ham filled the air, accompanied by the yelling and crinkling of the cigarrette paper between my fingers. This is what home felt like. Though my parents couldn't be there for me, my neighbours, stuck in a marriage out of habit, awating a grandchild that would eventually come too late to break their monotone life, could. I spent most of my afternoons at their house, and had dinner there every friday. Eggs, fries and ham. Every time, my life long favourite since.
They were my place of comfort. I could yell, I could run, I could laugh loudly and be a child around them. I wasn't expected to behave outside of what is reasonable and coolest of all, I could use swear words. They tought me to be a strong, fearless child with an open mind, but also taught me a lot of important life lessons I had missed out on the past. That version of myself however, just as it was about to blossom and cement into my being, was crushed by the forseen death of my neighbour. Soon after, their grandchild was born. I was no longer needed. I retracted into my shell further than I had before, all that progress undone. I stopped going for visits. No more friday dinners, no more afternoon haven. On the surface I was unscathed. On the inside I also felt unscathed. Kids always seem so strong because their brains have a way to push all their troubles deep inside, to be dealt with later once we're more mature, only for those who don't know to shrug it off as the usual teenage melodrama without bothering to think if maybe things aren't what they seem. It wasn't until three years later, when I was 14, that I stopped to think about the effects that event could've posed on me.

My childhood was a stressful one.

I had the pressure to succeed and be the best at everything. Those expectations however, weren't put on me by my parents, they were put on me by myself. I was desperate for loving and attention but everything I did seemed to be wrong. I moved wrong I laughed wrong and made friends wrong and spoke wrong. I was always too much. From a very young age I started pretending I was someone else, I started acting, mimicking others and repeating what seemed to get a good response, regardless of what it was because I did not have that innate compass that everyone else seemed to be born with that told them what was right and what was wrong, what was proper and unpolite. I was told being honest is good, but sometimes it was good and sometimes it wasn't so that was a lie. I was told people like people who smile, but that clearly wasn't true either because I got punished for smiling at the wrong times. I was told I looked better when I was quiet, but then I was too quiet and too boring. And so I ended up taking notes and spendins my time assimilating and creating what was the 'perfect girl'. This evidently was a tireless and impossible task, which led me to burn out at the age of 12, soon after my neighbour's passing. I was relentlessly berated for my change in attitude, and so I became the perfect girl again and pushed myself once more when I got to middle school.

Everyone around me remembers my childhood as a happy one. I was a smily happy-go-lucky kid with the best grades who always followed the rules and always did her best, so how could they not? It will never not dissappoint me however, when those around me (especially my family) refuse to believe the fact that it simply was not what it seemed, that a child can pretend, that it is possible to act every day without fail, and that I did that tirelessly until I physically could not keep up with it any longer. To this day they say I lie.

My childhood wasn't a bad one.

Through the dust and grime of the videotape, I found good memories, worthwile memories, the type I would do anything to keep.
Once again, I find myself in my bed, except my bedsheets are all the way off this time. I'm smiling, this time genuinely, I'm giddy with excitement. My whole body lays stiff like a soldier waiting for the roll call, except its my grandfather I'm waiting for. He enters the room, smiling ear to ear much like myself, and he stretches the bedsheets over me and wraps them tightly around me like a mummy and says 'LA MOMIA'. I giggle as the warmth from where his hands were seeps into my body and I drift into endless comfort, my limbs and torso blending into one incandescent sun that radiates happiness. Now, I am ready to sleep, and I know for a fact I will wake up rested, safe and sound.
This is my favourite childhood memory. I had better experiences and others that were a lot more fun but none of them make me feel loved like this one does. Something about it makes me feel loved like very few things ever have. If there is one thing I will never doubt about my childhood, is that it was full of love.