This Is A Love Story.
They say that the younger you are when you have a memory, the more intelligent you are. I’m not sure how true that is, but I do remember my first memory. The one that sticks around even now, and makes you believe that maybe memories aren’t just ours alone. Most people think a memory belongs solely to themselves. That it is theirs alone; to share with others, or keep to themselves, if thats their choice. They guard their memories from others selfishly, as if they alone deserve access to them only.
They also say trauma changes your DNA, unlocks certain parts of it, like a key. And that trauma changes your brain, so that you are more inclined to remember traumatic events at a younger age. I dont think this is true, though. Because I had been traumatized at such a young age, in various ways, but for the most part I blocked out certain parts. I think that is the brain protecting itself. So, maybe trauma isn’t the key. I think it’s something else, entirely, and they’ve got it all wrong. We are only human after all. Humans are capable of making mistakes over and over, and maybe sometimes what’s required to change that is an unexpected outlier, a different perspective.
My first memory was sitting in our old rocking armchair, in the house I grew up in, in a quaint little town that existed exactly half way between Los Angeles and Ventura. I used to stare out the window, rocking back and forth on that chair, and look at the stars in the night sky, North. Always North. And I’d rock there, thinking about how the universe was infinite. How infinite means there is no end. And id spend hours trying to understand how it is possible for a thing to exist, yet have no ending. If you ever spend time trying to conceptualize a thing that exists, and never ends. . the best way I can explain how it made me feel as a child, wasn’t confusion. Because i understood that part. It wasn’t anger, because I didn’t feel anger or rage until much later in life. It was fear. Or something close to that, but not identical. I’ve felt fear. I have pursued fear, in fact. I welcome it, still.
That’s a scary concept for a young child who hadn’t even begun schooling yet to spend their time doing. In fact, it scared me so tremendously, that I found myself seeking out ways to numb that fear, or recreate it. I’d watch horror films exclusively as a kid, until eventually I had seen every scary single movie in the horror section at Blockbuster. And then what? I lost interest in movies after that, and stopped going to the movie store with my Dad. I had no interest in the new movies, or any other genre, at all. I hate gory films, or war films, or rom-coms, especially. Because they’re all fake. The emotions they’re meant to evoke, I just never understood that. It’s not real.
Looking back, I know I was searching for that feeling I felt and remembered first. Such an existential depth of fear that has since been incomparable. Try as I might, I have still never been able to get that feeling back. I can barely explain it, either. There’s a certain loneliness that comes with feeling something that have no words of proper description for them. After a while, you stop trying to explain things to people, because they just don’t get it. They’re incapable of it. Because they haven’t felt it.
So, I rarely spoke as a child. Today, I’m better at speaking superficially with people, in a way that puts them at ease. But these aren’t interactions I take seriously, or close to my heart. They’re meaningless experiences with meaningless people. They are just interactions that I deem necessary to survive in a world filled with aliens. Because after so long, I got tired of being seen as a freak of nature. I just wanted to blend in and be left alone, without them mocking me, or being an outcast. I’d have rather just been alone. I felt like this for a long time.
I don’t blame them. I have no animosity towards people.
I’ve had other feelings too, emotions I used to assume everyone had, but as I got older and realized other people had no idea what or how I felt, because they had never experienced these feelings, I became bitter. To become so jaded towards the world and the people who occupy it, at the age of ten, is not something I’d wish on anyone. I spent more and more time alone during my schooling years, because I didn’t connect with any of my peers. I couldn’t connect with any adults, either. I’d rather spend my time outside with animals. I felt like the animals had more depth than any of the humans around me, with very few exceptions.
What I never knew though, was why. Why do I feel like this, and no one else does? I became, on the outside, cold and unfeeling. But on the inside, the parts that I had given up on showing anyone, it was a different story.
A while ago, I met someone on an online forum I spent a lot of time engaging in. There was something about him, that I immediately was drawn to. I’m not sure why. But it felt good to look forward to getting calls and texts and emails from them. Looking back, I don’t think i had ever felt that way about anyone, before. And when I finally met him, I felt like I was home. And when he suddenly told me to leave unexpectedly, it broke my heart all over again. It made me feel like a child again, and I started to think again maybe I really was all alone in the world; that no one felt the things I felt, and that it was pointless to try to connect with people. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that even there, there was manufactured falseness. How can I feel something so strongly, that made me feel so whole, for the first time in my life, just by being next to this other person, if they didn’t feel the same way?
My dreams are Nightmares, always. And the last 3 years, it’s the same, it includes some type of flood, or water and it’s me and my cat, Clair. I don’t dream about people, and never have. If people are in my dreams, I don’t see them.. or they leave me or try to hurt me. Recently, I had a usual scary dream, and he was in it… he’s the only person who has ever been in my dreams, who wasnt trying to kill me. I dont remember it, very well. But he was just standing there, waiting for me.
And I’ve since found that feeling again that I felt when I was younger. My first memory. I spent my entire life pursuing it, trying to recreate it, artificially. And being unable to.
And now that I’ve found it again… all I know is that I want to spend the rest of my life with this feeling, this person that is an embodiment of this elusive thing which ive actively sought out my entire life… and never let it go again. When I was a child, I remember having to force myself to forget about this thing that terrified me, this concept of what it meant to be infinite. And I spent my life afterwards being alone, and feeling such a deep level of emptiness, that I hate to reminiscence on. And I feel like I’ve been given a second chance with that feeling, and I’m not going to force myself to forget it again.
And I can’t wait to see him again, and hug him, and kiss him, and never let him go again, even if he tells me to leave. Which he won’t. Because I haven’t felt whole since I’ve left him. And I know he feels the same way.
So, they say that trauma is the key to unlocking parts of human DNA that gives people super powers… but I know that’s not true. It’s love.
Love; not trauma nor fear, or anger, is the key that unlocks our super powers, and allows us the ability to break free from the chains that bind us to a reality that no longer serve us, or doesn’t fullfill us. And I know when I see him again, I won’t make the same mistakes I made the first time.
