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!childhood lessons
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<<if hasVisited("1","2","3","4","4.5","5")>><<link "read again">><<script>>Engine.restart()<</script>><</link>><<else>><</if>>
I entered the physical space of my first school as an outsider.
I thought that I believed in [[God]].
One of the problems in a "Christian household" is that there is often no [[sex education]].Loneliness is hard to define, like the fuzzy memories of childhood, like watercolor [[landscapes]].I have always been distant from [[death]].(I was wrong.)
<<timed 1s>><<goto [[believed]]>><</timed>>I believed that if the other students thought the same they would be [[nice]] to me.(I was wrong.)
<<timed 1s>><<goto [[doubt]]>><</timed>>(I always doubted God and realized years later, from reading, that God itself was not "nice". God condoned the murder of <<linkappend "innocent people" t8n>> (according to God, there were no [[innocent people]])<</linkappend>>, God couldn’t remember the order of its own creation, God thought that pi was 3.)From the many little pains I learned, here is [[one]].Our teacher gave us a <<linkreplace "personality">><<linkreplace "religious">>religious personality<</linkreplace>><</linkreplace>> test. She wanted to show us the [[strengths]] that God gave us.My results said that I didn’t lean strongly one way or the other, I had no particular strengths. God hadn’t given me anything.
I couldn’t deal with the lack of certainty, certain that it was a mark of [[failure]].(More likely just a sign on indecision.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[changed]]>><</timed>>I wanted to be [[kind]], and caring and giving, and I changed my answers to fit what I wanted.(There was another girl in my class with my <<linkappend "name" t8n>> (but with a K)<</linkappend>>, who ended up being the kind one. I was bad in all the ways she wasn’t, like some [[sad doppelganger]] of hers that rolled out of the ground one day.)The teacher was so doubtful when she looked at my test. She told me she didn’t [[believe]] me.(She probably saw the parts that I erased, but I didn’t think about that.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[erased]]>><</timed>>I was so crushed, because I didn’t know who I was, but I knew that I wasn’t kind.
[[I was 12.|start]]
!childhood lessons
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<<link "read again">><<script>>Engine.restart()<</script>><</link>>
As a child, I was encouraged to find my own answers, to not simply ask questions, but find their solutions. We had a set of encyclopedias, or an [[encyclopedia set]].(I don't even know which form is correct, because I've lived so long without large books of outdated information.)
<<timed 4s>><<goto [[outdated]]>><</timed>>When I asked a question, the response was often, "I don't know, why don't you look it up?" When I learned the confusing boundaries of what was allowed and what was not, I often sought out my own answers. There was a book we owned (not an encyclopedia, but still large) about [[human anatomy]]. I spent a lot of time looking through it, while wedged between the back of our couch and the wall.I learned about <<cyclinglink "skin" "eyes" "lungs" "blood" "the stomach" "diseases" "respiration" "bones" "the nasal cavity">>, but I would also flip to the back of the book when no one was looking, to the parts that talked about the human reproductive system. I looked at pictures of "male" and "female" bodies, and the comparisons between child and adult. There were diagrams that showed me what was supposedly inside me: the strange closed system of the vagina and uterus, the curving path of intestine that ended in colon and rectum, the similar set of kidney and bladder and urethra, all of it smashed together and ending between my legs. There was also an odd bid of tissue below the pubic bone, the [[clitoris]], attached to nothing and never mentioned.(It makes sense now, that something serving no purpose other than sexual pleasure wouldn't be mentioned in an old anatomy book, but then the absence made it a mystery.)
<<timed 6s>><<goto [[pleasure]]>><</timed>>I knew that according to these pictures I would supposedly grow <<cyclinglink "hair" "breasts" "hips">>. It was odd, in a house where gender was never mentioned, because nothing was ever mentioned.
I knew I wasn't allowed to take off my shirt, which I had accepted since I didn't usually want to be shirtless. I forgot about these strange concepts until the [[clothes]] I wore became an issue as well.My favorite shirt was white, with long sleeves, and gaudy beads and tassels. I wore it until it became too small, and my stomach started to show under it. One day, while playing in the backyard, my mother told me I couldn't wear it anymore. There were other shirts, but that was my [[favorite]].(The other shirts were tank tops with spaghetti straps, which I liked a lot. I still like them, and I still wear them.)
<<timed 4s>><<goto [[straps]]>><</timed>>I didn't have breasts then, but I did have <<cyclinglink "distinctive" "puffy" "weird">> nipples that poked out of shirts unless I wore an uncomfortable training bra. The book didn't tell me about nipples, or what they could look like, or how they could appear so quickly. It only told me facts, so it never mentioned that my body was wrong or bad, [[something to hide]] and be ashamed of.(I learned on my own that <<cyclinglink "breasts" "boobs" "tits">> were good, but nipples were bad. I spent years wearing <<cyclinglink "pushup" "padded ">> bras and [[fear]]. In highschool I drew plenty of titted, nipless women.)I stopped wearing bras in college and two years ago I got my nipples pierced. They're often visible through my clothes, and I finally think they look good.
Despite that, I still layer my shirts whenever I might be showing too much, because I feel like I'm [[supposed to|start]].A line of blackberry bushes that weren’t ours, an infestation we stole from. A praying mantis the size of my forearm, or my forearm when it was the size of a praying mantis.
The sloping hill of a backyard, then over the fence a great expanse of [[nothing]]. The silence.
<<timed 1s>><<goto [[silence]]>><</timed>>The trees I climbed and the trees I wanted to climb. The places I don’t remember and the places my mind made, illustrated backgrounds for my memories, like the parking lots and the [[bodies of water]] that my younger sibling almost wandered into so many times.The sound of my [[voice]] and its unpracticed, wavering volume.I shout for attention. [[I sing]].I called the cops not once, but twice, when I couldn't find my parents. [[Why]]?They were only outside, but-
<<timed 1s>><<goto [[outside]]>><</timed>>I was cared for on the outside, but parts were [[neglected]].I stepped into the wrong elevator, and out onto the wrong floor, alone. I felt so unattached that for a few moments, I allowed myself to imagine that I could find [[another family|excitement]] to take me in.I was cute, it would have been easy.
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[cute]]>><</timed>>They hugged me and told me that they loved me when I left for college. They told me they were proud of me when I got a part time job to avoid them. I [[remember]] these moments because they stand out, because they’re so different.Affection from hands ready to [[close the door|start]].The fear of an empty house, the inability to remember a longer string of numbers. The way an empty room echoes from [[too much space]].The soft sounds of the ocean. The ocean, alone, and the feeling of fatigue in the limbs. There were no eyes to see me [[struggle]].Running errands. We arrived and then the car door always shut, and then silence. I cried at the empty front seat, a [[cry]] that I have replicated many times in the separated space of empty cars.(When I think about it, I’m not very surprised that I liked to play-pretend that I was being watched in all the mirrors of our house. Daily life was often a performance that wavered between [[reality]] and make-believe.)I was a smart kid, in some ways. I noticed things I didn’t realize that I noticed. Like the contradictions of God, or the fact that my parents still [[cried]] during funerals, which by their account they should have been happy.(I never managed to cry, though my younger cousin always did. She was better at being normal.)
<<timed 4s>><<goto [[normal kid]]>><</timed>>Death started simply. I had a great-grandmother Die, one that I never met, or that I met before memory. When I was told that she Died, there was nothing to mourn but a [[name]].(I’d tell you their names, but I use them as security question answers all the time.)
<<timed 3s>><<goto [[fishbowl]]>><</timed>>I had a Lion King playset, with a plastic elephant skull. I wanted it in their fishbowl, so I washed it off with soap and put it in. A day later, [[the fish were dead]], probably from the soap.The fish were disposed of quickly, with no ceremony, <<linkappend "no promise of heaven." t8n>>
Many little deaths came after that. A neighbor found some baby bats in a storm drain and drowned them. A cat found some baby bunnies in our backyard and scattered their corpses across the grass. We tried to care for [[the survivors]], but they died too.<</linkappend>>(I killed our first budgie with my own hands and I still don’t know why.)
<<timed 5s>><<goto [[killed]]>><</timed>>Somewhere down the line, the total emptiness was replaced with healthy distance.
I finally cried when the family dog was [[put down]]. I pulled over at a gas station on the phone with my family because they waited until I was driving back to college to take him in. I was only twenty minutes away when they did it.Years later, the day we put our cat down, I moved throughout my work day like I was asleep. I was hurt, but [[I didn't cry|start]].I’m nervously waiting for the day that Death comes [[close enough|start]] to hurt me.The body is a [[tool]].I have always been distant from [[Death|death2]].As a child, I was predictably lied to about Death, like Santa, or the Tooth Fairy, or dinosaur bones. I was told that when my great grandparents all Died (as they did, one by one, slowly throughout my young years), they weren’t really Dead, but were going to a different, better place. They were in heaven and they would always be [[watching me]], watching everything I did for the rest of my life.My first pets were two [[goldfish]].(A name that I've forgotten.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[faces]]>><</timed>>The second great-grandmother I met twice. She had started to forget things, things more important than a grandchild she'd only met twice. I was introduced to her a couple of times, as my father's child, before they gave up. They told me a short time later that she stopped talking, and then she stopped eating, and then [[she Died]].The third great-grandmother was kind. We would visit her in her small, safe room where she lived. She had [[a colorful fiber optic flower lamp]]. She had an [[electric keyboard]] she would play for us. She had a a number of [[handmade quilts]]. I know these objects better than [[her face]].(But I keep them. That matters, right?)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[farm]]>><</timed>>The buildings were beautiful in decay, rust and rotted wood, old things and pieces of a history that had been full of life. The property was small, most of the farmland sold off to people that would use it, but I would stand on the small hill by the apple trees and imagine how far it used to go.
It felt better to imagine than to speak to the [[living people]] still inside, to hear their stories of immigration, of learning English from a bible, of living in the same place for so long.When my great-grandfather died, my great grandmother stayed in that house for years. It was a fight to get her out, even when she lost her <<cyclinglink "sight" "health" "mind">>.
I drove two hours through the back roads of rural Iowa to get to her funeral, wearing a black dress that was slightly too hot because it felt like the right thing to do.
When I got there, her son, my grandfather, hugged me for the first time in years. His hair, which used to be redder than mine, was [[mostly gray]].Before, I didn't understand Death. Now I see it everywhere.
There are pieces of Death in my grandfather's gray hair, in my other grandfather's leg and hip, in my grandmother's slowly shortening memory. There is Death in the lines on my father's face, in my mother's tired eyes. There is Death in the way my face is slowly falling, [[melting]] along paths that look just like my mother's and my mother's mother's.My great-grandparents, as I called them when the rest were Dead, lived on a farm, or a collection of buildings that used to be a farm. They had a dog we weren't allowed to pet. They had feral cats that roamed the property for a while, and then were gone the next year we visited. They made applesauce that was sweeter and tarter than what we bought at the store.
Their house was small and felt cramped when the six or seven of us would visit, and I hated it. I hated their bony hugs, their faces that looked like they were melting, their hands barely covered in skin. I would stay for the snacks and the attention as long as required, but I preferred to [[explore]] outside.(Broken and sitting on top of a bookshelf in my parents' home.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[she Died]]>><</timed>>(Sitting in my bedroom collecting dust since I forgot how to play it.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[she Died]]>><</timed>>(There's one laying on my bed, with a small tear I'm not confident enough to fix.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[she Died]]>><</timed>>The body is a vessel, a means to an end. The body is a bunch of guts, or a temple, or a metaphor in a mech anime. I use my body to accomplish things, to get places. [[I am not my body]].(Not that I have any idea what I am, though.)
<<timed 2s>><<goto [[eva]]>><</timed>>As a teenager, I was desperate for attention, any attention. I had a forum I was active on, and lots of friends. I felt safe. I didn't realize until years later that it wasn't normal to take [[topless pictures]] and do sexual roleplays with adults as a 15-year old.I've been taking naked photos of myself for a good portion of my adult life and have done my best not to overanalyze it, but the fact remains that in my late teens I learned to get off by [[objectifying myself]].I liked attention, and I really liked sexual attention. Growing up religious made sex taboo. Sex was never just sex. Sex was <<cyclinglink "sin" "risk" "that deep fear of getting pregnant">>. Sex was [[just another act]].Sex was a use of the body, a means to an end. Sex could be fun or enjoyable, but more often than not it was <<linkreplace "a favor">><<linkreplace "a compliment">><<linkreplace "self harm">><<linkreplace "a chance to feel anything at all">><<linkreplace "a way to make amends">><<linkreplace "the feeling of doing a good job">>[[a way to feel loved|just sex]]<</linkreplace>><</linkreplace>><</linkreplace>><</linkreplace>><</linkreplace>><</linkreplace>>.
Consent was something that mattered for everyone but me. It was something that I understood, but never considered. A body is just a body. An act is just an act. We do things we don't want to all the time, and sex felt just the same. I had sex the way I laughed at jokes that [[weren't funny]]. It always felt different because it was my choice. If it was my choice, I had no one else to blame, even if I felt like I was [[backed into a corner]].But I don't feel that way [[anymore|start]].