Happy

Hey! Debbie Downer here. Sorry if last night's post seemed a little, ahem, dark. When I was writing it, it didn't seem that way. More flippant? And I reread it today and realized, holy crap, tone down the childhood trauma stories. 

I am a healthy and happy person guys. Promise. That was then, this is now. I can't say that my childhood was all rainbows and unicorns, but it had some good too. 

Not so much the house with the hammock. That was mostly bad. But, there was good everywhere else. 

When I tell stories like that, I often forget that the people hearing them haven't already processed and compartmentalized them. I forgot that some of that shit was pretty bad. It just seems like...I don't know...someone else to me. Like telling stories about a childhood friend. It isn't personal to me anymore. So, it is easy for me to talk about. And, yes, in a very flippant manner. Last night I was just reminiscing about all the houses and, unfortunately, the few memories I have from back then are partying too hard with friends or just kind of sad. 

But, there is also playing restaurant with my little sister. Spending hours coming up with perfect menus that consisted of chicken nuggets and mac and cheese. Then serving all of our little dolls meals. I was always the chef, of course, and my sister was the waitress. There was no such thing as toy kitchens back then, or if there were, we never had one. We had paper plates and plastic forks and stacks upon stacks of construction paper and scissors. The games that we came up with always make me smile. We never had toys. Just lots and lots of imagination. 

There were art lessons every Wednesday with my grandmother. Painting, making books, making clay pots, and collage. I still have a lot of the art I made then hanging on my walls. She had these two finches who would screech and screech and screech, so we would go upstairs into the TV room and listen to Yanni. I laugh thinking about the eye rolling that happened when my grandmother closed her eyes to meditate.

There were proms and first kisses and first loves and first heartbreaks and a lot of really awesome stuff too. 

I learned to cook in those houses. Albeit, not for a really happy reason, but I can thank my mom not being home for my career today. It all started there.

As much as I distance myself from all of that, it is a part of me. It made me who I am today. I don't regret anything back then. Doing a lot of drugs made me realize I don't really like drugs. Hating my mom makes me love her so much more today. As cheesy as it is to say, everything happens for a reason. And if I hadn't spent all those years so fucked up, I may have gone to Cornell and become a lawyer like I always wanted. Maybe I would have been happy, but I wouldn't be me. And I like me. I am happy.