A Person In Progress

I hate that my story has a sad beginning. People criticize me about this all the time. My stories are harsh. My stories are too intense.

I wish I could lie. I should create a quirky story about how I overcame some childhood obstacles. The kid-sized hardships that would pale in comparison to something as simple as adulthood commutes. Adulthood hardships are so much harder. So we are drawn to the right-of-passage story. It hits that nostalgia nerve. It reminds us of a time when our problems were minor, when our whole life was ahead of us. I can’t tell that story. I can’t lie. I don’t feel nostalgic for my childhood. It was not a simpler time. My childhood was my hell.

This repulsed me for a long time. I was angry and wounded and in partial denial about how terrifying my early years were. I tried very hard not to realize just how scared I felt at every moment of my first nine years. I had never felt safe anywhere in my life. I was repulsed by that fact. I was repulsed by my frightened dog behavior. I looked like a frightened dog, he always told me. My father, he repulsed me.

Then I didn’t feel repulsed by it anymore. I’d like to tell you a story about some eureka moment, but there was no flash of realization, like: hey, my childhood wasn’t my fault! I can’t lie. That’s another story I can’t tell. My story is about gradual unfolding, a slow piecing together, a separation of fact from fantasy. I let myself off the hook, little by little by little.

The next step is to honor what my childhood gave me. I am a person in progress.

~ by Charles Bivona on August 8, 2009.