How My Heart Behaves

There was a time, about two years ago, that my mom told me about these tapes my dad had of my brother and me when we were young.  She said that I had to watch them because they were so cute.  I didn't really think much of it.

Thanksgiving, 2006.  We were all gathered at my dad's and step-mom's, and someone randomly slips in the tape on an old VCR and plays it on the big screen.  Here I am, this little boy with big brown eyes looking into the camera, telling my dad that I miss him (my brother and I made this tape for my dad because he moved to Florida for work).  We were telling him about what was going on with us, what new dogs we had, what new karate moves we could do...  The list goes on.  So, anyway.  Everyone watching this is laughing at the cute stuff we're saying and doing (and stuff my brother is doing behind me when I get close and talk into the camera).  

2006's Thanksgiving was the period of time I like to call The Surfacing.  Everything was in question, no one could be trusted, and nothing was safe.  Seeing myself at the young age of 7 made me want to jump into the TV and pick myself up and run me away from my life.  It made me want to be my own dad.  I wish I could've hugged the little boy who was carrying so much weight on his shoulders.  I was sitting on my dad's couch that Thanksgiving day, no longer thinking of a blurred, failed childhood, but I was actually seeing the little boy who was going through it.

That Thanksgiving day was the first time in my life that I met my pain head-on, and it was by looking into my own eyes.

I don't really know why things feel so fucked up right now.  You can call me dramatic and you can say that I'm over-analyzing things, but I can say confidently that I had my childhood robbed from me.  I was asked to carry responsibility that no child should be asked to handle.  I saw things that turned me wayward.  I saw money take the place of love, and I saw lies take the place of reality. I saw two very lost and confused adults use their careers and alcohol to escape the hurt their parents' placed on them when they were kids.  On three occasions, I saw a man hit a woman.  I put headphones on and pillows over my head to block the yelling and arguing that came from a downstairs living room.  I prayed to God, trembling, that He would make the screaming stop, but He never did.

I talk about healing a lot, because I want it so badly.  I want to know what it feels like to use things as stepping stones and not stumbling blocks.  Perhaps I am a house that burned down.  Maybe I was made long, long ago and in a day, I turned to ashes because of someone else's fire.  

It may take a while to build me again, but I will be made new.