The Image of Childhood

 

I wonder how much of their childhood anybody really remembers. And how reliable can such memories be? How did I become the person I am? It all seems largely unconscious. I can remember feelings and habits and friends and teachers and trips and certain conversations and arguments, but what conclusion am I to draw from any of it that would be trustworthy? It seems certain that the viewpoints or opinions of my family would be very different from my own, and that they must remember me in a different way than I remember myself. But what ways are those? 

 

I have always been smart. I know that. But have I always been kind? It doesn’t seem like it. But maybe I’m misremembering. Maybe I was a kind child, maybe I had a tenderness to me. I remember thinking of myself as tough. I don’t know if I still do, I guess I feel further removed from the idea of toughness I had then, which was largely a physical one. I think I was friendly, at the very least I had friends. I never felt like I was lacking in friends, really, until early middle school, although even before that I can remember feeling the certain kind of loneliness that I carried for a long time, and that maybe I still carry. At the same time I still had my innocence, still had a sense that school was just what you did. You went to school and you learned. 

 

I remember in sixth grade I missed soccer tryouts. It wasn’t intentional, I just didn’t realize. That’s the kind of spaciness that maybe other kids didn’t have. I remember that I wasn’t that upset to not get to play soccer, I was just ashamed that I didn’t do what I was supposed to. I remember, when I went to Hamilton, moved up into middle school, being, really, ok with it all. I didn’t think twice about it really, I didn’t really understand that this was one option of several, that my future wasn’t set in stone. I just thought: this is the way it is, this is normal. I wasn’t popular or possessed of many friends, but I was ok with that. I was kind of alone, but that was ok, or at least I told myself that it was ok. I didn’t really know how to be popular. I didn’t understand it. I understood that I was not popular, and that other people were, but I didn’t really know why. 

 

I was jealous of the popular kids, but it wasn’t a jealousy that made me want to fit in, it was more of a generalized anger at the injustice of the existence of different social statuses. I had friends. I wasn’t popular and I knew that, but I wasn’t unpopular, I had friends. I was my own person, and that was just fine. Except it wasn’t fine of course, I really was quite angry and often confused about why it seemed like I was always some kind of outcast. 

 

Becoming good-looking made it possible to deal with those feelings in different ways, but it didn’t resolve them. I still wasn’t popular, I was still alone. But I could talk, and I could smile, and I could be charming enough, likable enough. I wonder what all of my nonconformity got me? What did all my independence from “the system” amount to? I knew I was fighting something but I didn’t really have the language to describe it effectively, even now I’m not sure that I do.