I've always had a bad memory of everything from my childhood. In all honesty, I do not remember anything from my childhood. I have a ton of pictures and no recollection of any of the places I stand by in the picture. The truth is, I don't remember anything from before I was 5. The only thing I can remember from 5-7 was walking by myself to school in the morning, and buying myself a riceball on the way. I had some daycare school afterward and mom picked me up at the end of the day and we'd walk home. I don't really remember what our house looked like...
My first year in America, I should've been miserable, but I wasn't. And if I was, I don't remember it. 3rd grade should've been just as bad, but I don't remember anything either. Not only that, but I can't recall anything I learned. The only thing I remember from 4th grade was that I loved playing handball, and had a crush on this guy, Marcus (still dislike that name...), who I played handball with, but he liked this girl named Tiffany (didn't like her... wonder why, eh?). 5th grade, I still couldn't really develop any real memories, and the people in my class treated me like shit. I hated them all. I was in a mixed class with 4th and 6th graders due to my lack of well spoken English, but I was quite actually smarter than most of the people in my class, English-wise I mean. I couldn't relate to the 4th graders, because they seemed to be in another world... I didn't get it. The 5th graders were mostly boys and I couldn't relate to their topics. The 6th graders thought they were all better than me, because that's the way Chinese people are. No matter what anyone else says, believe me, anyone who is Chinese, born and raised, are extremely stubborn about the fact that they are the best. They are some of the most snobby, obnoxious people ever. It's sad that I'm talking about them this way, as I'm Chinese, but they are like that. And I hated that attitude.
I've gone to different elementry schools every single year and never really made any lasting friends, except one of my neighbors. We were good friends until we both moved. I went southwest and she went northwest. We haven't been very close since then. What scares me about this is that it should've been a somewhat tramatic childhood. I was one of those kids that other kids would pick on, or at least not like very much. I only really had one friend (my neighbor) which I parted with by the end of 5th grade. It seems to me that, looking back on it, I'm really shocked that I never treated any of this as traumatic. As if... all this was normal... And that really scares me. I suppose it's a good thing that I don't remember most of it, but I wonder if... if that I do experience any kind of a trauma, would I be able to handle it? Or would I forget that it happened?
I wonder if my past is too traumatic to remember... Maybe I didn't really forget, but I just didn't want to recall. Hmm...
6th grade was probably the only fun year of all my elementry school years. That's when I first met James and like a school girl, I really had a crush on him. It lasted for maybe 2 years... at least one year, I know that much. It seemed silly then, and it still is silly, but when I look back on it, it brings a smile to my face, because I was still so naive.
Middle school was a blur. It is indeed the best years of my life so far, because I was happy-go-lucky, and in fact, I was quite lucky also. I had a group of friends and for the latter year of middle school, I had a boyfriend. And it seemed that life just couldn't get any better than that.
Then we broke up, and I remember the pain that I had suffered, and to be honest, I really think a part of me died. As much as it seemed that I'd got to be happy-go-lucky again, it just wasn't the same, because I know that I'd lost my innocence then, but perhaps I didn't know that yet. And after Chris... and Nancy... well, it seemed like things could only get worse, couldn't it? And I know that after that, I've never ever been happy-go-lucky again. If I were in that kind of happy, blissful state, it wasn't the same pure rapture that I had before in middle school. This kind of elation was also filled with understanding of how the world work, responsibility, and other morally correct things like that. My happiness was forever marred.
The part that devastates me so much is that I'll never be able to have that pureness of laughter again. And ever since high school started, I can just see so much pain, and it has clouded everything else in my life, including my past joys. Maybe.... If there was any trauma that I couldn't handle, maybe I've already had it happened to me, because it seems like I've never handled it very well, and look how I turned out. I am such bitter person, and I can be so cynical. I've developed a malicious side of me that never existed before I discovered the other end of the bliss. I wonder if this happens to everybody too, or if it's just me?
Will I ever feel that same bliss that I felt in middle school? That pure kind, without any infliction of damage? The kind I felt before I lost my innocence? Or am I doomed like this the rest of my life without any diluted laughter?
Now, I wish I could remember more of my life in middle school, because I would like to feel that kind of elation again, but all these corruption that I have felt since high school, just seem to block all those good times away. I wish that I hadn't taken middle school for granted.
What has high school been for me? High school has been the mark of the loss of my innocence and everything else good natured I had in me. A lot of the times, I hate who I have become because of my past, because sometimes I think that I would've turned out differently had I lost my innocence earlier or remembered the bad parts of my childhood. The possibilities are endless. And then I began to wonder if I had been destined to turn out this way no matter what, and the paths I took were all correct... and the inevitable truth is, I was meant to turn out this way.
And that's so sad, because I don't know that I really liked the way I turned out.