As I reflect upon my childhood and growing up in Camden, I often question just what it was that shaped me, and why I am who I am today. This of course brings up the age old question of Nature vs Nurture, however I feel that bringing up that concept is the same as asking which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width. So instead of wondering how I ticked, all my life, I’ve wondered how other people tick, and why they became that way. One of my most vivid memories was on a day where I was walking home from school. I seen a kid about my age, maybe younger who was wandering through a yard as though looking for something. I didn’t know who the kid was, all that I did know was that something wasn’t right. On the other side of the road there was an abandoned building shabbily boarded and withered with age. On the second floor of that building there was a man holding what appeared to be a rifle aimed at the kid. As I passed, taking care not to get involved with anything that was going on I couldn’t help but wonder what the relationship between the man with the rifle, and the kid was. In my head I created this elaborate illusion that the man was using the kid to traffic drugs, but in reality there was no real evidence to support that. All that I do know is that of all the times I passed that place I’d never seen either the kid or the man again. Even though I could not say for certain what was going on, I always looked to that incident to remind myself that I could just as easily disappear, without having anyone know my name or story. Of course I’ve considered keeping a journal or something to record my observations in, but then again there was no point in doing so. Camden was the type of place where I need only walk down a road to recall both times of happiness and times of tragedy. Either way I didn’t wish to immortalize those times in writing. Because in doing so I would almost taint the significance of those events, destroying the meaning by trying to describe what is beyond my vocabulary. Instead I just need to pass those areas and the memories would become more lucid then what they’d be on any type of writing I did or any type of writing any writer did. I was asked to create an autobiography and relate it to a higher sociological issue. But after all that I experienced picking just one issue would be insane. You want to know the type of things I experienced; Violence, sexual harassment, drugs, incest things that people would never believe that someone as young as I have experienced, and yet here I am counting them off one by one for you. Well if you’d come up and flat out asked me I would never tell you and furthermore I’d be mad that you even asked. I’ve heard that by keeping things like this hidden I’d die faster but you know what, I have my ways of venting anger and bringing things up from the past isn’t one of them. I suppose that one of my ways of dealing with reality is escaping from it. What I mean is that I love stories. I loved the stores in games and in movies, I loved the stories in textbooks and in school, I loved the stories in the bible and from every walk of life imaginable. It wouldn’t be farfetched to say that I love every story accept my own. I don’t seek pity and I don’t seek praise. I have no interest in getting lost in that type of nostalgia. Even bringing up the type of thing that happened is enough to make me tremble in fear and anxiety. This is why I will never write an autobiography. The only reason I even wrote this much is because I want to let people know that I don’t like to talk about it. I’m not traumatized, and What happened isn’t even that interesting, what matters is who I am now and that’s all I care about.
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Thanks 4 the fav!
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