The Simple Times that Died
A small part of my childhood during the lockdown that briefly broke me down
I can’t say I’m from a long time ago but, it definitely got me thinking about how life turned things around for me. In the most mysterious ways, I’ve learned to discover myself. In the most profound ways, I’ve come to forget about it all.
As I lay here, on an average locked down night, I’m taking a long walk down memory lane. Very much like the movie Inside Out, I’ve had some trauma of my own that caused me to completely shut out.
Thankfully it didn’t involve parents splitting up but, I’ll tell you that the times may have changed for the better because the nineties were sure as hell loaded with perverts who often show up in a child’s lifeline disguised as a disgusting uncle from out of town who happened to be visiting a neighbor who’s house the child’s barely been allowed a visit not more than twice.
What was it like growing up there? Before a perverted hand took to ruin my innocence? Just before that night when I was sat beside mum as she kneeded the dough and readied the stove for 21 chapathis, well accounted for my family of six, I remember struggling with my studies. It was dictation, something I was usually exceptionally great at, but it had been 3 weeks since I had said a word to anyone about anything, absolutely defying the laws that governed the noisy talkative loudmouth of a child I had been. Surely something was the matter but, she couldn’t put her finger on it.
My sisters worried about me a lot. They did watch me being aloof and lost. As responsible as they always were, and wonderfully well trained to report to the queen, the news was brought to mother’s notice. I remember it like it happened yesterday, but my perspective has very much changed. The embarrassment had a lot to do with how cornered I felt whenever I was asked to explain myself. I was a shattered eight year old who struggled with the her vocabulary. Seems such a thing was never described on TV.
Forget hearing about it on TV, not even school. Not among friends, not among trees, fresh air, early sunsets, black tar, aeroplane passers by, shooting stars, street games nor street dogs. It took me years and years before I had learned the words that meant whatever the hell was going on then. Its taken more years than that to understand what the true extent of those words really is.
It had to have happened again, ten years later, only this time it was a different kind of perversion — a more hormonal desperation rather. Regardless of how appropriate they were to make me a strong enough foundation to call my former youth, they cost me so much that I took twice the number of years to clear off the debris. I’m alright now, a few tears shed in the many years that lept and I finally have the opportunity to cry for the right reasons. I discovered nostalgia like never before. Today, I made some amazing progress with myself by trying to picture life from back then.
Its very important to let go of what may have destroyed a part of you. Its tough to say I learned it the hard way.
I started off trying to remember what the windows looked like and all I could remember were these hoops that were screwed onto the panes. Maybe they were all brown. I remember being assigned a desk cupboard, I had the one on the left and my favourite person had hers on the right.
She was my big sister. She loved me like my own mother. I’ve suckled on her spit lollipops, broken her icecream cones, had her push me down the tricycle road, made fake tea with soap (and have this nightmare of a “friend” drink a good enough amount out of peer pressure) and.. you get the picture. Who still has those Pokemon cards we got free with Brittania? Or the tazos that we could collect and assemble? Or those marbles we could play goli with!
Well, all of this was clogged up in mine while the sister had made herself an elaborate Back Street Boys shrine. The fangirls never took a day off. With two cassettes — the Millennium and Black and Blue, she soon picked up a new band to woo. They were called Blue. Boybands were everything for my sister and her many many many friends who also went with us to the convent. And I just liked everything she liked, mostly because it was all very accessible.
