It seems like the older I get, the more I miss my childhood, which is rather funny given how much I couldn’t stand my childhood when I was growing up. Such irony right? My mind tends to think this way usually when my pain levels are quite high. It remembers the moments of fun I had in my youth, but it tends to also forget about the depth of pain I went through during all that time as well.
Pain such as the loneliness of having very few friends, watching my parents fight over and over again about everything, seeing them drink alcohol too much, dealing with a father’s constant attempts at suicide, facing rigid rules by a very controlling mother, being bullied at school, struggling with my sexuality in the closet, hiding the fact that I was molested by an adult male, and a number of other things as well.
But there is one thing I must say I’m grateful for and that’s the fact I can even remember these days the good times I did have during my childhood. To me that says I must be healing because there was a time when all I could think about when I thought about my childhood was the pain I endured and nothing more.
Somewhere along the lines in recent years I began to recollect the things I did enjoy as a child and I think the only reason why those memories started to materialize is because of all the wreckage I worked on clearing away. Living in recovery from addiction, going to therapy, and pursuing other organizations for spiritual development helped me to remove much of the pain and resentment I carried into my adulthood and that in turn seems to have cleared the way to having better memories. That’s why I must thank God today for having a lot fonder thoughts of a time in my life that once was so extremely painful.
I thank God for remembering plenty of ice cream treats from the ice cream truck on hot summer days, for huge games of kick the can, for those annual vacations we took to Myrtle Beach, for the hundreds of mini-golf games we played there, for all the fun swims I had in our backyard pool, for the hikes I often took with my father, for the snowmen and snowball fights we had in those stormy winters, for the cookouts we had out on our deck, for the game nights we occasionally enjoyed together, for all the ping-pong battles we had in our basement, for the singing of Christmas carols while playing our piano, for those pizza nights out at a place named Dick Sarah’s, for other surprise dinners out to new places, for the many around-the-world games of basketball we played in our driveway, and so much more. I’m grateful to have all these good memories now, and although I wouldn’t want to go back and relive my childhood again, I at least can remember it with greater fondness now.
So if you’re like I once was, where all that can be remembered are the terrible things that happened growing up, I encourage you to draw closer to your Higher Power and work on clearing away all that negative energy from within you. As I’m sure in doing so, you too will find a weight lifted off of your chest and memories flooding back in of times that really were fun.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson