Sometimes, days feels like other days. Today, despite being quite firmly a Tuesday, it feels like a Sunday to me. Not sure why, really.

It just feels Sunday-ish out, I suppose.

Mind you, the weather is fabulous. It’s a quiet sunny day that feels like it was made for kids to play and adults to swim and for everyone to have a lovely time.

It’s the sort of day that, when I was a kid, would have prompted a trip to the beach. Growing up as I did on an island which has more coastline than land, the beach is never far away, but our beach of choice, as it was for most of Summerside, was Linkletter Beach.

I know. Linkletter, right? Sounds like it should be found amongst the crosswords and sudokus in a pen and pencil puzzle book somewhere.

I have been thinking about those sun-drenched days at the beach from my childhood because those were days when I can say I was genuinely happy. There was a time when I was young when we were a more cohesive family unit who did things together now and then, and those were my Bradbury days.

I’m not sure what put an end to all that. I suppose as my father’s temper got worse and worse, we grew increasingly distant from him and without him to be the hub of a family activity (not to mention the only one of us who could drive… my mother never learned), the excursions had to stop.

But those little trips to the beach or to Rainbow Valley or to one of the national or provincial parks (which were also beaches…. like I said, more coastline than land), shine quite brightly in my memories, and that is a good thing.

It’s good because I feel like I am at the point in my recovery when I need to start remembering that my childhood was not all bad. There were some very happy times, especially during my preschool years, when I was an adorable redheaded kid with oodles of natural charm and an amazing brain behind the big smile and the little freckles.

School is where things went really bad.

But even then, there were happy times, despite my having to hide from the entire student body and being such a lonely, bored kid. There were times spent in the library, where I felt safe and happy because there was always an adult there (the librarian), so no bullies could get to me there, and from a very early age I have loved books, so the school library was the perfect haven for me.

Even today, in my fortieth year, I automatically feels more relaxed and comfortable and even happy when I am surrounded by books. I suppose those books were my world when I was in elementary school. They were both safe harbor and my only companions.

No wonder I grew up to be a writer. Of sorts. I am a creature of words.

Looking back, the librarian probably found me to be a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I was her ideal kids, because I loved the library, I loved books, and I read voraciously.

But because I was so lonely, I tended to try to befriend whatever adults were around (always got on better with grownups anyhow) and so I did have a tendency to follow her around sometimes, or ask her questions I probably already knew the answers to, and generally be kind of a pest.

In a perfect, Judy Bloom world, the librarian would have befriended me back and we would have had a long friendship where both of us lived a little, learned a little, and grew as people.

But she was a very busy woman, librarian to a whole school full of people, not just me, and so I get the feeling that I got on her nerves quite a bit with my clingy, dependent behaviour.

That’s the think about having nobody in your life to look out for you. Kids have a strong instinct to seek protectors, and if they can’t find one, they will try to make someone be one for them.

Perhaps that is why the school administration’s apathetic disdain for my being bullied was such a huge betrayal and caused such enormous trauma to poor little me.

Grownups are supposed to protect little children, aren’t they?

But back to my happy times. My home life was not so bad, at least not compared to life outside the home. I was lonely there too because people tended to just forget about me and because it was nobody’s job to keep me company, nobody did.

Not that I was without problems. I was very hard to reach, and clumsy, and a tad high-strung at times. But what kid isn’t, really? Maybe I did too good a job of sounding like an adult, and it made people think that I didn’t have the same needs as any kid my age.

Or maybe people just got busy having lives and forgot about me.

But despite that, my home life was okay. Certainly it was not an abusive household, and all my material needs were well covered. And there was plenty of books to read, and televisions to watch, and eventually video games to play as well.

Those are no substitute for actual friendship, acceptance, and socialization, but they are what I knew.

Throw in the Internet, and not a heck of a lot has changed, really.

But I can’t say I was unhappy at home, my father’s tantrums aside. I was sad sometimes without understanding why, but I guess I learned to bury all my emotions under constant media consumption.

Just stay distracted and nothing can get to, right?

But the wounds remain even when the symptoms are ignored. Looking back, it amazes me how little of what was wrong with my life I could understand at the time.

But everything is normal to a kid. Or at least, everything is equally weird.

Everyone thinks their family is normal until they are teens and start truly comparing their family to the other families they know.

Then your family becomes the weirdest, wrongest family in the world.

If you are lucky, you eventually realize that all families are about as weird as yours.

It’s normalcy that is the myth.

Enough for now. Peace.