I don't remember

I've been sitting here between moments of sheer terror, anger and despair, trying to think back to happy times; moments when there wasn't a care on my mind or in my heart.  Moments of pure joy...bliss...laughter...light.

I don't remember.

I remember (sad, bad, mad?) grandparents, naked and drunk.  I remember bad people at base housing.  I remember the word "NO" a lot from teachers when I first started out because I could already read and write and count and do so much more than the soft-headed spawn in the short chairs who ate paste and wrote in a some sort of retarded foreign language of lazy parents and hit or miss.  I remember packing boxes. 

I remember a record player and records that were different colors.  Some were yellow and one was even red.  That was pretty cool.  "Little Miss Stuck Up" was one of my favorite 45s.  I remember not being able to take a bath.  That sucked.

I remember Christmas being hard, but always having something.  That was bittersweet.  The joy always came with a price so joy was never joy. 

I remember church and God and the fall of men of God and then... no god. 

I remember family illness, wearing my grandmother's clothes, being teased, and skipping school.  I skipped a lot of school.  I didn't skip to play, I skipped to get away from the teasing and the eyes.  All those eyes - looking right through me.  Surely they saw that I had no idea how to be around them.

I remember protecting my sister - I always did that.  She was my job, and I took that job seriously.  I took that job seriously until she fired me a few years ago in the most painful way.  I will never recover from that.  Ever. 

I remember picking strawberries for money in the hot June sun.  I ate half of them so the money wasn't great, but ---- the moments at the lake after work, when I rode my bike to the point to swim and laugh and jump -- was that joy?  I think so. 

Things started to go wrong at about this time.  It was when I first remember engaging in neurotic excoriation and thinking about dying.  It was when I first started my attempts to solve things by walking ... solvitur ambulando ... and talking - to myself.

I remember abuse at the hands of others.  There isn't much to say about that.  I remember people coming and going - some good and some not - none of them really mattering one way or the other in my life.   

I don't remember much more after that.  Isn't that odd?  I remember only bits of pieces of a span of 40 odd years.  Was I ever happy?  Do I even know how to be? 

I don't remember.