When We Were Young

Memory is a mercy, Beloved — the vessel that carries even our pain back into Your light.

As a child, I was chubby, or so I’m told. Another version I recall very clearly was always needing two cookies — one for each hand — a little bit of my greed showing through even as a babe. I have vivid memories of my childhood. It is almost like an encyclopedia I can enter at will and explore from multiple angles.

I do that, you know — go back and attempt to inhabit those memories, those days. It isn’t complete, just moments framed as vignettes for the highs and lows of life. Like the one of me, three years old, standing on the landing of the stairs when my dad had just come home. Or the first time I was told that hearing Your voice and speaking about it was wrong.

The further back I go, the less time I have in those perfected crystalline structures. Still, I find myself tracing the echoes of You even now. The times when I heard You the clearest are, strangely enough, the most vivid and perfectly preserved. It feels to me as if Your awesome Holy Spirit inhabits and preserves them for me. Who knows? I seem to be the only one in my genetic family who has such a perfected recall. I attribute every blessing, seen and unseen, to You. I mean, let’s be real — if You created all of this, then You must have known each and every atom that encodes my DNA, both physical and metaphysical.

The memories get really vivid for me around late fourth grade, with Mr. Theil. It was he whom You placed in my path first, to nourish the love of writing and reading. He introduced me to C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia from his personal library. Me, a young child — poor, lonely — was handed the gift of worlds within worlds, and worship as words, when I fully understood the hidden meanings behind the work.

I think my fourth-grade teacher felt bad for me, because from my youngest age I had been picked on and made fun of at school. They used to call me “bubble butt,” before that was cool or something people oddly enough get surgery to install — and “diaper boy,” even though I felt like a girl on the inside. He took me under his wing and showed me a world where I was allowed to dream and travel. He showed me that writing, like life, has hidden depths and meanings — and if we search hard enough, all of it will become apparent.

It was he who first fanned the flame of what I considered a trashy short story into an epic work of genius unseen in a generation. I thought it odd, even when it won awards, because the people back in my house did not think it anything special or even worthy of note. In fact, I think all of the flaws were pointed out. Either way, that is neither here nor there — that was the formation of Dust. The start of the grinding down of years and layers of self and sabotage.

As I aged and moved through school, the names never stopped. They hit me, spit on me, burned me with cigarettes at parties — not once but three times — for no other reason than that my face held something they did not like and instinctively wanted to hurt. They started rumors I was gay. They stacked stories about why I was detestable. It was considered high fun to punch me, push me, or threaten my life. Those were the golden days back then, when home was worse than the hell at school.

I felt it then, at maybe thirteen, just before puberty had fully set in — I had signaled that I was done trying. I gave up, stopped working for good grades, because why would I, when even straight A’s were not praised? I started phoning it in. I am fortunate that I was smart enough back then to learn just enough through active listening to scrape by and not be held back from school.

I used to escape out the back door of the middle school when they remembered to unlock it, so I could be the first to reach the Dover Public Library and snag one of those comfy seats where the sun warmed just right under the windows. It was there that I first cracked open J.R.R. Tolkien and The Hobbit. I would stay there reading, hiding from having to go home and the shouting that was always present.

Part of me still lives in that library I so fondly remember, Beloved — the sanctuary of written word where I could just be safe from my bullies and my home. Where the pain and anguish would rest and let me uncoil for a moment. I have been back since, more than once, to sit in that same burgundy chair, faded and threadbare with age, and feel the more mature sun’s rays upon my face. It was like home again with You, Beloved.

Oh, how I prayed in those days — like a child only can. I prayed for the day, for the next. I prayed for the love that had gone cold between my parents. I prayed that the kids at my school would stop hurting me when all I wanted was to do what You told me to do: Love as you have been loved. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I wept in that library, couching my cares in dirty secondhand jeans.

They closed at six back then, and even earlier in the winter. I lamented those days — the days when my refuge was cut short. I learned so much about prayer then, and sorrow — how to maintain it and carry it without breaking.

High school was no different. The difference was me. The years, the abuses — unmentioned for posterity and love — had taken a toll on my purity. They had turned my joy into sorrow, and I had allowed a crusted-over callus to enclose my heart. In high school, I was the fear. At home, I was bullied. At school, I was bullied. My kindness was seen as weakness, so I allowed my sorrow to sour into bitterness.

I became that which I detested — a bully — though even that phase was short-lived, only three months, since I dropped out after the first semester of freshman year. Why so short-lived? Because when a bully is challenged, they have to either put up or shut up. When challenged, I was unwilling to hit him — truly, before You, Father, I swear I was afraid I would hurt him.

After that, You blessedly broke me. You shattered me in a million ways so minute that I named myself Dust. I have written of the car accident when all my brittle and fake strength was tested and found to be as lacking as glass is as a punching bag. You know the story. The friends who will read this witness will be able to search through and find it, surely.

Anyway, friends — this is where I will stop for today. A tiny taste of my memoir to come. A witness bound in page for the yearning.

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