Going to try to let out more of my cold dark thoughts tonight. The fridge door is open and all my chilly memories are free to thaw out and come back to life.

Welcome home, boys. It’s been a while.

The thing is,. as scary as bad memories can be – and they can be extremely scary for me because they are so vivid that remembering them can make me feel like I am going backward in time- at the end of the day, they are just memories. They are no more powerful than any media storage device, like a thumb drive or a DVD.

You choose what to watch, You choose when to pause when things are getting too real. Yoyu decide whether to finish the film or put it back on the shelf.

And when it’s all over and the frinal credits roll, there you are, safe and sound on the couch, a little lighter of spirit and a little stronger of soul.

Keep it up and you can binge-watch.

So tonight I am going to try to finally make progress on that stack of unwatched movies in the corner, and trot some of my bad stuff out for a show.

My first bad memory was from when I was a toddler and I was in the living room of the house I grew up in, and as I was toddling about in my footy pajamas (awww!) I stepped on a needle that someone (presumably my mom, because none of the rest of us sew) had accidentally dropped there.

It’s a weird memory because the living room is empty of furniture in it. Maybe it was just after we moved from Cambridge Street, which I barely remember because I was so young when we moved, to 135 Belmont Street, the place I lived from that time (maybe 1975?) till I moved out in the mid-Nineties.

Anyhow, stepping on a needle with my itty bitty foot was painful enough. But if that had been it, I probably would have forgotten it.

Whart made it memorable was my brother laughing at me when it happened.

Now before you form a lynch mob, remember that if I was say 2 years old at the time, my brother David was six. And six year olds can be forgiven the occasional wrong emotional reaction because their minds are not developed enough to control their reactions or screen their responses yet.

Also remember that before I showed up (unexpectedly),  my brother David was the baby of the family, and miiiight have resented it some.

I mean, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask to be born. I never wanted to be an accident. I would have preferred to have shown up when my brother was 2, not 4.

But still, for my whole life, I have felt like I was an unwanted imposition on my family and it was simply understood that of course I would do all I could to help people forget I was there, and of course I would never ask for anything at all because all the resources had already been allocated before I showed up,. And of course I would cheerfully agree to whatever was asked of me no matter what, even if it’s diametrically opposed to my own best interests, because I was so grateful that I was getting any attention at all and wanted so bad to please my parents and heaven forbid I should have any problems with anything at all they asked of me because then they might decide I am more trouble than I am worth and stop paying attention to me entirely.

I’m sorry I bothered you by being born and needing things.

I’ll just leave then,.

And the worst part is that by playing my part in my own neglect, my parents could tell themselves that they asked me whether I wanted to do it and I said yes, and that makes it all okay.

As if  an eager to please child can be trusted to protect their own best interests versus parents who really want him to be as “convenient” as possible.

I feel like I was not so much raised as permitted to stay  as long as I didn’t remind people I was there too often.

Like a ghost, really.

Maybe some of that came from my brother and his resentment. And it was my sister Catherine who told me I was useless and that the best way for me to help was to stay out of the way and be quiet.

And I have been doing that ever since.

I mean, they made me do my own clothes shopping, and only gave me the money they got as a “baby bonus” for me.

Talk about minimum effort parenting.

They even made me revenue neutral.

I was way too young to be making those kind of decisions. What to buy, how much it is worth, what was I going to need in the future.

Every time I did it, I was a nervous wreck because there were so many options and I fekly completely intimidated by the task and by all the grownups in the children’s clothing department who seemed to know exactly what they were doing and got impatient with me when I was trying to choose something and got in their way.

And nobody even thought of actually teaching me to do it right. You know why?

Because they didn’t care if I did it right. They wouldn’t even know if I had done it right or wrong because that would involve paying attention to me.

They just gave me the money and told me to go do it and that made me go away and, in the end, that’s what everyone has wanted me to do all along anyway.

To go away. To stop being there and needing things. To do my utmost to be as user friendly and disposable as possible because I wasn’t even supposed to be there and I should be thankful that I get anything at all.

And as you know, nobody ever said these things to be (except for the bit about being useless)., but it is how I was treated.

And in the end, that’s all that really matters.

No wonder I sometimes feel like the world would be better off without me.

People have been telling me that my whole life.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.