Birth to first memory.

The story of my life begins much like most things within it: outside of my control.

I know how emo it sounds to say “I didn’t ask to be born,” but it’s simply a factual statement. Do we usually ask for gifts? Maybe sometimes, but a true gift is usually a surprise— something sprung on you suddenly by someone else.

In this case, the gift was my life. For a long, long time, I didn’t see it as one. It can sometimes feel like a curse, like hell, or just something I was expected to do unwillingly, like most things in life… schoolwork, homework, get a job work… pay to exist.

But however horrible things can be, I think back to how hard my mother worked and fought to provide for me as a single mother. She found some old journal entries she wrote when she was working alone, pregnant with my brother, and dealing with me and my separation anxiety, and it was then that I saw who she really was: a scared little girl trying her best to be an adult all by herself. She could have aborted me, given me up for adoption, or worse, but she didn’t. Because she loved me. She wanted me. And she wanted me to be happy.

I feel a lot of regret and remorse for being such a handful and also, at times, ignorantly ungrateful. I had to become a mother and lose my children to fully understand what my mother gave me. In realizing this, I also vowed to no longer try to end my life, if I can help it.

The common theme in my life is loss, primarily by ghosting, and secondarily by actual death. Baby’s first ghosting took place after my conception, but long before my birth, and as you may have surmised, was done by my own father. 

I think that the way you come into the world often says a lot about how the rest of your life will play out. As I have previously mentioned, I also feel that one’s given name holds a lot of power as well, and often defines us as people, whether we realize it or not. Most do not, simply because the meaning of their name is not blatantly apparent to them. Mine, being a word, can’t help but rear its head constant, but I have already discussed this topic in a previous entry, so I will skip that part for your convenience.

My first memory is… difficult to discuss. I may have mentioned it in the past, but I can’t be sure, so forgive me if I am repeating myself here. 

When I was a baby (vague, I know, but the specific details have never really been relayed to me), my grandmother accidentally hit a boy on a bike with her car. As far as I understand, he was coming down a blind hill really fast, and she didn’t have time to stop. He died in the hospital, and this really destroyed her, as you can probably imagine. From what I know, she was throwing up, literally sick with guilt. 

I remember first hearing this story when I was much older, but as I was being told this, it came as no surprise to me because I remembered it first hand in very crisp detail. The mangled bike, the young male paramedic who loaded him into the ambulance… I was there, but there is no way I could have been.

Some people tell me that I probably heard the story of this incident when I was young and I formed the memory myself. It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t believe someone would have told me this when I was too young to even remember. So then they say perhaps I heard it being discussed and formed the memory. Also possible, though I find it just as unlikely that anyone would really bring it up when it caused my grandmother such distress.

What do I know, though? I never even learned the boy’s name. Searching online turned up only one result about a boy, a bike, and his death by car accident in 1989 in the city where I was born. That boy’s name was T.J. Heyden. No idea if that was him or not, after all, I didn’t see his face from where I was in the memory. 

It isn’t really important to my story to even mention this, except for the fact that this trauma most likely shaped the woman I grew up calling my grandma. She was so very important to me, and yet the woman she was before this horrible tragedy was someone I never had the chance to know.

So when other members of my family talk shit about her, I can’t be sure if they’re talking about the woman she was before she was changed and molded by guilt, or the one she was after the fact. This is important to note, because I too have been drastically changed over the years as tragedy after tragedy, trauma after trauma has befallen me. You will always find that there are those who choose to cling to their idea of me as the person I was at any given time in my life other than the present, despite my daily efforts to grow and change. To those people, I simply say that perhaps if you made the same efforts in your life, you might be able to expand your mind to discover the person I have become, and to see how disparate that person is from the one you once knew. If you can try to do that, then stay tuned for the next chapter. If not, then please do not read any more from this journal, for you will simply see what you choose to see, and I have had quite enough of that in this lifetime.