Watch Me Entertain Myself!

Sacha Guitry once said, "You can pretend to be serious, but you can't pretend to be witty." Oh yes, I'm the great pretender.
(pilot episode: 20 January 2004)

Friday, February 26, 2010

Happy Sad

Someone asked me in formspring.me what my happiest childhood memory was, and what surprised me was I couldn’t immediately think of one. But sad memories, they were a-plenty. Hmmm.

I remember waking up under the bed with my older brother yelling. As a kid I was deathly afraid of loud thunder and howling winds; the night before there was a thunderstorm, and apparently during the night I went under the bed to hide. Everyone was looking for me that morning, and luckily my brother spied me as he was climbing the stairs to the second floor. I don’t remember any of this; all I remember is waking up, and the frenzy of my parents as they were alternately relieved and angry with me.

I remember waking up one Christmas morning, rushing to the tree in the living room, and seeing all the gifts, I started counting mine. Then out of curiosity, I counted my older brother’s gifts—he had two more than I had. My mom used to say we should always have the same of everything, so we had the same clothes, the same (or very similar) toys. I remember holding back the tears even though I was the only one in the living room. I snuck back in bed. I pretended I woke up late and put on a smile when I saw my gifts under the tree.

When I try and remember the happy memories, the first ones I recall are mostly post-college ones. But I do remember the earlier ones, after a bit of mulling over.

One day I’ll ask a shrink why I easily remember the bad ones but blithely ignore or conveniently forget the happy ones.

4 comments:

Ming Meows said...

i would like to believe that as a gay, having a happy childhood is a rare thing.

gelangenie said...

"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." -- Sigmund Freud

Felipe said...

I was raped at the age of 14. ECHOZ!

I don't remember any super happy or super sad memories from my childhood. Siguro bata pa lang ako, nasaisip ko na ang lahat ng tao, chinochorva lang ako kaya chinochorva ko sila. So ayun. Deadmatology 101.

citybuoy said...

aww this was really cute. strange na sa sad post ako nacute-an. haha i saw a shy little mcvie, teary-eyed on christmas day. :c