Condemned to Relive It?

PB often reflects on the past. Funny that I used to spend so much time dwelling on my past, but have seemingly lost interest in it.

Now I contemplate the future. Although less so lately. I'm kind of content with the right now right now.

* * *

I didn't like my childhood. Still don't. That's part of the reason why I never wanted children and still have none (as my eggs grow old, it is probably too late). I wouldn't wish childhood on anyone. Not mine, anyway.

I was a product of rape, or so my mother once told me--even if she denies ever having said so now. My father raped her. More like forced her, I guess. She was planning on leaving him, unbeknownst to him, and didn't want any more children with him. He refused to raise an only child, having been a miserable one himself. So he forced her that night. And I was conceived.

Not that I wasn't loved. Actually, from the moment I arrived both my parents loved me more than they loved my brother, NoName, a very sad fact indeed. NoName was the object of my father's fury. My father himself had been abused by his step-father, and so, in keeping with tradition, he was impatient, short tempered and down-right abusive with NoName. It wasn't the beat-you-up kind of abuse, but it was physical--excessive spanking, haul-off-and-hit-you reprimand, screaming, etc.

Dad was/is an alcoholic. An angry drunk. The violent kind.

He and mom argued loudly from time to time. My most vivid memory before kindergarten is of an argument going on downstairs while I huddled, sobbing, in my brother's arms on his bed.

I sometimes question whether I liked NoName back then. In watching the old Super 8 movies Mom had converted to video tape, I look at him with a sense of... what is it? contempt? no, that's too strong a word... disdain? no, not really. I'm not sure what the word is. Dislike, I guess. I just know that even back then, at the age of 3, I didn't really like my brother. But that's another story.

Mom finally left Dad. I don't think I ever really missed him. He traveled a lot on business, so he hadn't really been home that much before he left. All I knew back then was that with him gone the house was finally quiet.

Mom has made many foolish and cowardly decisions in her life, but leaving Dad was one of her smartest. For that I give her credit.