Reading Day 5
A flash of understandingXK #fiction, #pain, #masochism, #abuse, #internalisation
I’ve always been fascinated by pain; for as long as I can remember. How overwhelming a sensation it is, and still how easily forgotten. I’m not one of those who blame everything on ‘I was not loved… my mother never hugged me’, no nothing of that sort. I had a most normal childhood, nothing special really, two parents, and they were loving. I wasn’t a lonely child. I have two older siblings, a sister and a brother, and a little brother I also had. We got along well, of course we had our fights and arguments, all of us, anything else would have been suspicious. But I wasn’t molested or anything, I’m not one of those people who cryingly confess that ‘when I dropped the soap bar on the floor I had my brother up my but’. Nothing at all in that way, not even close, not at all. I was happy. We were all happy. Of course, I’ve done weird and inappropriate things, and seen my bits of shared craziness. But who hasn’t? No one lives in a glass bubble; we’re humans, not goldfishes in an aquarium, so that’s just as it should be. Yes my big brother did have this thing for torturing animals, and now you will all use that as an explanation for my psychological state, but please do not do that. Because I doubt that that affected me at all. If he was a grown-up man doing these things, he would have, with no hesitation from my point of view, been a clear ‘send him to the chair nominee’. But after all ‘torture’ is a bit of an over dramatic word to use here, he was just fascinated about life and death, power and force, as all boys are his age. They’re kids and they’re exploring the world. Either way my memories don’t torment me at all. The flies crawling without wings, they’re just brief pictures from a very distant childhood. These birds with outplocked eyes, and the neighbor’s cat shocked in a black plastic bag and dumped in the river. Are just these diffuse pictures that come to my mind. Blurred as light damaged negatives. And I don’t associate them with my brother. No, not at all, I love my brother. I rather associate these memories and animals to this blur which the whole childhood from the viewpoint of being grown up is. It’s honestly hard to believe you’ve ever been a child.
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