I don’t want to do this. Because I know it is going to hurt. And I really don’t feel like I have the wherewithal to do it right now.

But it needs to be done. Recovery demands it. I have to get my internal narrative more in line with the totality of my history if I am to become a saner, more whole, and above all a truly balanced human being.

And what the hell, I can’t think of anything else to write and it’s not like the task will be any more appealing later.

So let’s do this thing.

Yes, I had a tragically and brutally isolated childhood. I spent way too much time alone.

But it wasn’t all bad. The isolation was less than total. I spent time with the family. I sometimes had friends.

Like when I got home from school, sometimes I would watch soap operas (mainly General Hospital) with my mother. It was a good time to be with her as she was not busy and we could talk during the commercials.

Watching GH was how she decompressed after a long day at work and before she had to get up and make dinner.

I’ve spoken of that injustice before, though.

And sometimes I would watch The National and The Journal^[1] with my Dad, and spend time with him that way. We also talked during the commercials, though he did most of the talking.

I didn’t mind. Chatty as I am, I am also content to listen if someone either is interesting (and my Dad was) or just needs someone to listen to them.

And I wasn’t always alone at school either. I had friends sometimes. I had Kevin and Trevor in Grade Six. We bonded over heavy metal, especially KISS. I wouldn’t say we were super close and I was always nervous around them, but I wasn’t alone.

Then in junior high I had Troy Little and Philip Oatway. We weren’t friends outside of class but we were pretty close in Percy Motherfucking Mcgougan’s homeroom class, and talked about comics and goofed around.

Then I met Jason Heisler and Michael Copeland. We did stuff in and out of school, including going to the arcade to play Double Dragon during lunchtime, hang out at Jason’s place to watch stuff on VHS, and shoot the shit.

They would turn on me sometimes, though. I understand (but won’t go into) why now, but at the time, well, it didn’t exactly help my social anxiety.

So the truly lonely times were grades 1 through 5, and 10, 11, and 12. Most of elementary school and all of high school.

Ergo, I was not a lonely iceberg floating in a frigid sea for my entire childhood.

It just feels that way now because I have so much unprocessed loneliness and isolation from back then. And it’s true that even when I had friends, I didn’t get that close with them and often felt like they were barely tolerating me.

But my childhood was not the uninterrupted scrape across dirty jagged ice I have described in this space in the past.

There was some good parts too.

And I am through sacrificing the truth in the name of narrative efficiency.

More after the break.

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What else didn’t suck

There are various other aspects of my childhood that were not terrible.

Like summer. Because my mother was a teacher , she was off during the summer. So in the summertime (when the living’s easy), I had my Mom back.

That made things just like they were in those golden days before my mother went back to work and I had a full time parent.

Gen X was the first generation to grow up without a full time parent.

I feel like not enough attention has been paid to that.

So anyhow, summer was a lot nicer. Mom was home, I was out of school and thus safe from my bullies in my home neighborhood, and we even did stuff as a family again.

That sucked a lot less than the rest of the year. I still had no friends, but that hurt a lot less with my parents and siblings around.

And the weird thing is that even though life was objectively crappier than a music festival port-o-potty, I was a lot less depressed back then. I was a much cheerier and energetic person as a kid. And I left the house on my own a lot more often.

Heck, sometimes I went all the way to the other end of town just to play games at the arcade in the mall there.

I only became seriously depressed after puberty. Hmm.

Speaking of arcades, I have happy memories of the times I spent there, too. A lot of the time, I would run out of quarters and just hang around.

Watch people play games. Offer advice. Get on people’s nerves.

It was a happy place for me to be because I felt safe there.

Same for the local mall, Waterfront Center. I enjoyed hanging out there too. It was only five blocks from home and I knew it well and felt safe there too.

What else. Well, speaking of safe spaces for scared foxes, there was the school library. For a book loving kid, this was a slice of heaven, because not only was it full of books, there was always an adult there (the librarian, who was nice), I was safe from being bullied there too.

To this day, the sight of a lot of books on shelves in one place has a strong soothing and calming effect on me.

So yeah. Not everything in my childhood sucked. There were relatively warm patches between the ice ages. II sometimes had friends, and family, and happy places to be where I felt safe.

I guess nothing is ever all one thing. Everything is a mix. Life is not a cartoon.

No wonder cartoons make me feel safe too.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.