"share a childhood memory"

Something happened earlier today that revived a memory from childhood that I had long kept hidden and locked in a vault in the deepest part of my mind.

I won't go into what happened today but I will share with you the memory that came back to life as a result of what happened today.

I was maybe 7 or 8 years old at the time. I was playing with some toys at the upstairs living room of our old house. I don't think anyone was home at the time, I don't recall any of my family members being around. It was day time because I remember the smell of sunshine permeating the house and as I type this, I am recalling the smell of food in the air. It was fried fish. Our maid at the time was cooking lunch downstairs and had left me to play with my toys.

My sister had a couple of hamsters. Cute, fluffy little things. Cream coloured fur with tiny, dark brown globes for eyes. They had the most beautiful face, their snouts constantly in motion, sniffing everything the eyes could and couldn't see. My sister didn't like me touching her things, she was a teen then, going through puberty and we all know how that feels like. We were always fighting, I bit her a lot, I remember. One time I even bit her gold necklace off of her neck and she locked herself in her room all day. I hated her and I suspected she hated me. But like all younger sibling, you cannot help but be fascinated by everything your older sibling owned and I was jealous that she had had a couple of cute little hamsters.

Seeing as no one was home, I sneaked into her room and took her tiny little rodents out of their cage and played with them. I made them homes out of legos and fed them veggies that I made my maid cut into tiny hamster-bite sized pieces. I remembered having a good time playing with them when my maid called me to lunch. I left my mess on the living room of the second floor and went downstairs to eat.

The fried fish was delicious, I love fish. Fish always make for a great meal. I watched tv downstairs while I ate my dessert (cut watermelons with some sweetened condensed milk) as the maid washed the dishes.

A few hours later, I went back upstairs to clean up the mess of legos and a plethora of toys that I'd made when I realised that I'd left the hamsters unmanned as I went to lunch. I had always been a forgetful, clumsy child and I grew up into an even more forgetful and clumsy adult. As a result of my lack of proper observation, I had left the hamsters in a air tight container and left them there. It had been a few hours since I placed them in there (why I did it in the first place, I had no idea. I was a morbidly depressed child, it is possible that on a subconscious level, I knew what I was doing but I can no longer recall) and I removed the lid of the container to see these two cream coloured fluff bundled up together: dead. Their snouts no longer pointed at the air and sniffing the scents of that warm day, instead they faced the ground, with their bodies flat in a sleeping position. It was beautiful in a sad kind of way.

I don't remember how I felt when I saw them but I remember being so afraid afterwards. Afraid because it was the first time I had killed something that was not ants, afraid because my sister would kill me, afraid because I had become a murderer and felt no sense of remorse. The only thing feared for was myself. So instead of telling my maid about them, I took the hamsters back to their cage, covered them in some of the wood shavings (like they would if they were asleep) and left them there for my sister to find.

I thought nothing about it until the next day when my sister told us that her hamster had died and that it looked like they died in their sleep. I'm sure that however I reacted to her announcement, I must have stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe she even suspected that I killed them but why would she have any reason to think that a 7 year old girl would kill her pet hamsters when I knew she loved them dearly. I breathed a sigh of relief when she buried the hamsters out in our yard and we hardly spoke of those little things again (she got a couple of new ones not long after).

To my knowledge, she still doesn't know how her hamsters died and I have never thought of telling her about the incident, not even now that I suddenly have recollection of that incident. I don't know if I will ever tell her, maybe I'll include this little anecdote in my will for when I off myself but eitherway, I wasn't haunted by it nor do I feel a strong sense of remorse.

Today, I could have taken a life but here I am, blogging about my childhood memory. Perhaps I am a monster of sorts and that terrifies me almost as much as it excites me.

Always,
Q.

Yellow paint.

I like it when it's cold enough to wear socks indoors even though I live in tropical country. I like it when my bestfriend responds to things I say so I know he hasn't lost his ongoing battle with his brain. He has to make it so I can make it. 

Why does a person let another person determine whether or not they're going to make it through to the end of their life or prematurely off themself? I don't know. I don't ever truly know. I feel like it's kind of a madness shared together, not so much folie a deux but just a kinship. 

When I stare at my wrists, my forearm for too long, it brings up feelings. Not so much memories but feelings. I yearn, I thirst for things I have tried to fix but have left buried because what else do you do when it's going to be perpetually broken?

Sometimes, when I stare long enough at my forearms, I can make out the scars I left there so long ago. So many scars that took so long to heal. All the scars I thought disappeared. But they never truly disappear do they? They lie dormant under the skin, blending in until that one day when you accidentally look their way and realise they were always there. Nothing ever leaves. 

I love coke but I don't drink them as much as I'd like to. The only beverage I indulge myself with is coffee (albeit all kinds of coffee and sometimes tea) otherwise my liquid intake mostly just includes good ol' plain water. 

I found out recently how much thinking of children and the idea of a family in the future upsets me. I never want that for myself nor have I ever envisioned it for myself unless by accident in the form of a nightmare. To be honest, it was never like I thought I'd make it that far in life. How am I already here? Who makes it past the age of 17? Not me. At least I'm not supposed to. 

Do you think the birds ever get blinded by how bright the sun shines in a summer day? I wonder about that all the time. Maybe birds shit on people because they cannot see anything in the daylight. I sympathise because my eyes are so sensitive to sunlight it drives me crazy. 

Sometimes I get upset when I realise there are worlds out there that I have never and will never explore thanks to my limited language skills. I speak only 2 languages fluently and that has never and will never be enough. There are times when I think and voice out how I cannot wait to be 60 years old and be the master of 8 languages at least but then I come down from my castle in the clouds and realise that I may not make it that far. Making it to 22 is an achievement that ought to be celebrated, but who'd the celebration be for? It never was anyone's intention for me to make it this far. Shit sure as hell wasn't my intention. 

Isn't it funny that the moment you were born, you start to die?

P.S. 'yellow paint' in my title is reference to Van Gogh's relationship with yellow paint. Van Gogh used to eat yellow paint because he thought that would make happiness be inside of him. Nevermind the fact that eating paint is poisonous, I feel like he had the right idea there. 

P.P.S. I didn't re-read what I wrote so any grammatical or spelling errors are overlooked. This note is specifically for those of you who come here to read my words simply to criticise my writing skills. I don't have a blog to please you. I have it to please me. That is, if I can ever be pleased by my own writing. 

Keeping my hands busy and away from my skin.

When I was a kid, I used to be afraid of the dark. I slept with the lights on until I was 11 and then I moved on to night lights. I felt like such a grown up the first night I slept with the night light on. I guess that was one of the first times I felt like I wasnt a kid anymore. I guess that's stupid, sleeping with a night light doesn't make me an adult, really, it's no different than sleeping with all the lights on.

I started sleeping with the lights off the first night I moved into my sister's house and out of my parents'.

The truth is, it wasn't darkness I feared. It was more than that.

Hushed arguments whispered in the dead of night, being shoved into my sister's bedroom when the whispers gradually became louder. Muffled yellings penetrating through all the barriers in between. Shouts travelling beyond bedroom doors, walls, comforters and palms covering my ears. The hate resonating through my eardrums and goes to places deep in my mind making me feel emotions I didn't understand, not at the time at least. Somewhere in what felt like the distance was ny sister's slow voice, telling me to sleep. My solace then. Still my solace now. 

It was always in the darkness when things get ugly.

It was never the darkness I feared, it's what it reminded me of that terrifies me.

I am not scared of the darkness, I am afraid of fights.

Q.