In the beginning there was void.
Age: 10
Time: After school, late afternoon, winter
Location: Bus stop, on my way back home
Environment: Two teens with a cocky adolescent rebel attitude and me with dorky clothes
Development: I look at them curiously, not staring, only glancing. They look, say something to each other and the other one shouts "what the hell are you looking at?".
I respond "you"
She goes "why, do you have to?"
Me (rather indifferent, plain and factually): "no, but I just wanted. It's a free country" (spiced with a que-sera-sera style of intonation of lightness and indifference)
She "yeah right like it's a free country. Haha, well what would you know about Finland compared to other places?"*
Me (casually, thinking it would be a point which means something considering the stuff that happened which, basically had us fleeing the child-care system to Finland. Yes, fleeing, since we were about to be put in foster care after a long cycle of being separated from our parents and being monitored with them "in safety" in family-/children's homes from which we ended up escaping and moving. More about this perhaps in the case of a request from the audience): "I've lived in Sweden"
Them: "Haha! SWEDEN!" and a plethora of other namecalling related to Swedishness
Bus arrives, I step on, nervous, they step on after me, keep pushing me, coming real close and just sitting there monitoring what I do, just basically intimidating me. C'mon, age-differences and even seemingly small size-differences make even early teens seem HUGE in the eyes of a sensitive and even otherwise petite 10-year old. Plus their pushy manner and that there were two of them. An uncomfortable 30 minutes pass, I step off, the other one (now by herself) also steps off. Waits a little, starts following me. Her pace quickens, thus, so does mine. It ends with me running like hell up to the outer door of our block of flats, insert keys and with a minimal margin lock it before she gets to it and bangs on it furiously. I go up the stairs, open up our door. Enter, move mechanically in a vacuum of emotion, completely blank into the living room up to my father. Stare at him and splurt out "I was just pursued by a bigger, angry girl up to our door" waiting to get some reassurance of that I had been wronged upon and that I didn't deserve it.
He looks at me and with a slight down-his-nose look, quite unaffected says "so why did you have to irritate her?" and resumes watching television (he isn't the type to like Lucille Ball yet he was watching it because numbing his brain with any crap no matter what it was is just part of what he does/did)
I am taken aback barely noticably. My vision is nearly blinded by a white blur and I walk into my room not really knowing what to respond**. I never was very good with communicating my emotions basically because I wasn't allowed to display more than fear of god/daddy and happiness. I knew something was off, but I didn't know what it was.
Is it completely unacceptable behavior for a 22-year old to remember a bucketload of shit like this (not willingly, or with a bitter grudge, but momentarily zone out) and over a decade later spontaneously burst into violent tears while intoxicated by a few glasses of wine? Sometimes I just wish I could erase bits and pieces of my memories. Just enough without shaking the good ways I've evolved thanks to my past, but just to get the worst violations of my sense of justice out of my spinning head.
*annoying adolescent attitude in general, it's not like we're in fucking Nazi-Germany or, to use a more current example: People's Republic of China. Just because they don't have their Anarchy (which, by the way is a good idea spoiled by the fact that IT JUST WOULDN'T FUCKING WORK IN PRACTICE) so that they could kick in old ladies' heads and curse the world for being born into it by pouring sulphuric acid into our water supplies
**this being accompanied with a a detachment from reality, sense of floating and other symptoms only years later to be recognized by me as an anxiety attack which in junior high, developed into panic-attacks on my way home, anticipating arrival and any possible prevailing circumstances in the home
Time: After school, late afternoon, winter
Location: Bus stop, on my way back home
Environment: Two teens with a cocky adolescent rebel attitude and me with dorky clothes
Development: I look at them curiously, not staring, only glancing. They look, say something to each other and the other one shouts "what the hell are you looking at?".
I respond "you"
She goes "why, do you have to?"
Me (rather indifferent, plain and factually): "no, but I just wanted. It's a free country" (spiced with a que-sera-sera style of intonation of lightness and indifference)
She "yeah right like it's a free country. Haha, well what would you know about Finland compared to other places?"*
Me (casually, thinking it would be a point which means something considering the stuff that happened which, basically had us fleeing the child-care system to Finland. Yes, fleeing, since we were about to be put in foster care after a long cycle of being separated from our parents and being monitored with them "in safety" in family-/children's homes from which we ended up escaping and moving. More about this perhaps in the case of a request from the audience): "I've lived in Sweden"
Them: "Haha! SWEDEN!" and a plethora of other namecalling related to Swedishness
Bus arrives, I step on, nervous, they step on after me, keep pushing me, coming real close and just sitting there monitoring what I do, just basically intimidating me. C'mon, age-differences and even seemingly small size-differences make even early teens seem HUGE in the eyes of a sensitive and even otherwise petite 10-year old. Plus their pushy manner and that there were two of them. An uncomfortable 30 minutes pass, I step off, the other one (now by herself) also steps off. Waits a little, starts following me. Her pace quickens, thus, so does mine. It ends with me running like hell up to the outer door of our block of flats, insert keys and with a minimal margin lock it before she gets to it and bangs on it furiously. I go up the stairs, open up our door. Enter, move mechanically in a vacuum of emotion, completely blank into the living room up to my father. Stare at him and splurt out "I was just pursued by a bigger, angry girl up to our door" waiting to get some reassurance of that I had been wronged upon and that I didn't deserve it.
He looks at me and with a slight down-his-nose look, quite unaffected says "so why did you have to irritate her?" and resumes watching television (he isn't the type to like Lucille Ball yet he was watching it because numbing his brain with any crap no matter what it was is just part of what he does/did)
I am taken aback barely noticably. My vision is nearly blinded by a white blur and I walk into my room not really knowing what to respond**. I never was very good with communicating my emotions basically because I wasn't allowed to display more than fear of god/daddy and happiness. I knew something was off, but I didn't know what it was.
Is it completely unacceptable behavior for a 22-year old to remember a bucketload of shit like this (not willingly, or with a bitter grudge, but momentarily zone out) and over a decade later spontaneously burst into violent tears while intoxicated by a few glasses of wine? Sometimes I just wish I could erase bits and pieces of my memories. Just enough without shaking the good ways I've evolved thanks to my past, but just to get the worst violations of my sense of justice out of my spinning head.
*annoying adolescent attitude in general, it's not like we're in fucking Nazi-Germany or, to use a more current example: People's Republic of China. Just because they don't have their Anarchy (which, by the way is a good idea spoiled by the fact that IT JUST WOULDN'T FUCKING WORK IN PRACTICE) so that they could kick in old ladies' heads and curse the world for being born into it by pouring sulphuric acid into our water supplies
**this being accompanied with a a detachment from reality, sense of floating and other symptoms only years later to be recognized by me as an anxiety attack which in junior high, developed into panic-attacks on my way home, anticipating arrival and any possible prevailing circumstances in the home