3/5 of a Life in 10 Seconds

I am buried by memories today.
Not buried
Obsessed.
Not buried.
Consumed.
Both of the three.
Seventy-five thoughts in two-franc pieces.

My 'Blast From The Past' is no mere explosion- it's a super-nova , expanding to hundreds of times it's former size and consuming the present as it does so. It's so bright and intense that it arouses curiosity from astronomers in distant reaches of the galaxy- then it suddenly contracts into infinite density and I am trapped, crushed by the weight of my own light. The horizon is lost to darkness and I am sustained only by my own fear.
As it fades, so do I.

I can't remember ten years in ten seconds.
It doesn't compute. My systems shut down and emergency automation takes over.
I sit and do nothing until it's too late to go to work.
My automaton takes over and calls in sick.
Good Robot. I've trained it well.

It's overload-my circuits are shorted, I'm caught in a feed-back loop and it's beautiful , cathartic and quite possibly one of the most painful things I've ever felt.

It isn't exactly ten years, and it didn't all come back in ten seconds; it feels that way, but it really started this weekend...


I was talking to a blogpal on the phone the other day and they told me about some troubles that a teenaged relative had brought upon himself, and how certain permissive parenting techniques are unwise at best ; catastrophic at worst.

This conversation created a fissure in one of my well-constructed emotional memory dams, before long I was telling my friend things that I'd never told anyone, including myself. It just started coming out.
Chaos words.
This was a terribly unfair thing for me to do to them. Who wants to listen to someone meltdown on the phone? Not me.
But I can't stop the purge- I need to get this shit out of my head - convert the mad energy into something else- communicate somehow- and there isn't any one person who can deal with it.

I used the guitar first and that was good for a while, but now my neighbor is home. She's nice enough, but she's a cop and works odd shifts, and I am inhibited and afraid to play loudly when she's home. Playing softly is not what I need now.

That's why I have a blog. It's quiet and doesn't bother anyone unless they choose to read it. I know somebody eventually will read this, so it makes the expression worth the time.
To me anyway, and right now that's what's important.
That might sound selfish, but to me it's self- preservation.

Note to self: I read back and I am dumbstruck by how many words I've managed to place between my intended subject- childhood memories- and this note. This is telling.

OK. I'm not ready for the details yet. It's all very jumbled to me anyway, but the gist is this:

When I was growing up I never had a steady home. I was pretty much allowed to do anything I wanted to as a teen - I spent most of my 10th-11th grade years living unsupervised- this meant a lot of drugs, booze, sex and all the adult problems that come with such things.

At the time I thought that it was great fun- I was so much wiser and experienced than my peers, surely I would conquer the world one day and they would be sorry for picking on me...

Well, I was clearly wrong about this. I look back and I know that I am somehow lacking some essential foundation that can only be built during childhood- some quality that needs the help and guidance of a loving but disciplined adult hand.

Someone to say No. Someone to tell me when I'm fucking up.

I'm figuring this out on my own but it's twenty-five years too late.