Welcome
Today is my 25th birthday. I have had the urge to start this writing for months now. Today seemed like an inexcusable day to start.
Todays writing is intended as a space to release my memories from childhood and untangle grief that has been carried through generations before me. The place to start I believe, is the beginning. I was born Jan. 7th 1999 in Portland, Oregon. My family almost missed the birth because they had left to grab a drink down the st.
My first years are blurry, I’m told we lived in a one bedroom apartment in Portland. Shortly after we moved to a family home in Rio Dell, Ca. This is where my first memories begin. Nally lane is at the end of a back street on the south side of town, a little over an acre with a creek running through it. The redwoods have always provided me with a sense of home. The years spent here have fond memories but the physical reaction I have to recalling most of my childhood have led me to this sub stack. A tightness in my chest combined with throat closing sensations urges me to stop typing. Go smoke, distract, create a layer between myself and the feelings. Analyzing away the pain by deflecting it from an omniscient point of view.
Running around next to burning trash piles while yelling “It’s snowing!” as the ash falls, a green armchair we would sit in and rock back so hard the whole chair would flip, riding the dirt bikes, doing donuts on the beach of the river before preschool.
When I was 3/4 my mother had a still born. This effected my parents heavily, as it would anyone. Unfortunately instead of facing these feelings, they were compartmentalized and they attempted to move on the best they knew how at the time. I now know too well how to retreat from the world around me and into myself. This was the first instance it was taught to me. My parents weren’t able to support me emotionally because they were in crisis themselves.
Sometime after this my grandparents came to visit us from the Bay Area. While having dinner one night my grandfather began to choke. My memories of that night are running from the table to the bathroom because my dad was in the shower, being taken to the neighbors who owned 5-10 cats and smoked in the house, then being taken to a cousins to wait for my parents to pick me up. My grandpa died in front of us that night. I’ve never known how to navigate this, sharing this story verbally is always a casual and accidentally shocking event.
During this time my father broke his leg in a dirt bike accident and was introduced to Oxy. My mother was a full time student at Humboldt state. I spent a lot of time alone. The toll of unprocessed trauma took a toll on my parents and eventually led to my father cheating on my mother with a mutual friend. They separated for the first time, I am about 7 years old at this point. The separation was not explained to me. At the time what effected me most was my dad getting rid of our family dog because “it kept running away”.
Eventually the separation ended and my parents started trying for another baby. We moved to San Francisco, this is where most of my mothers family lives…….
(I’ve been writing for 45 minutes now and could actually do this all day, haha. I hope to pick this up later in the day but I plan on submerging myself in no phone service & trees for this birth celebration! If you’re reading this, I love you! Thank you for seeing me!)