Dreams.

He used to take me to my favourite corner shop – perhaps only because it was the closest to where we lived – but perhaps that’s also why it was my favourite. It was close to what was then home. I was four, and although it is true that we may remember things the way I now remember distant dreams the morning after, in pieces, and end up having to conjure these pieces together, often creating puzzle pieces of your own, like glue, these particular memories are as vivid as the dreams you wake up from, sometimes wet-eyed, perhaps maybe even once on wet bedding as a child, doubting whether you were dreaming at all. I remember how the shopkeeper would look at him with loving eyes, and then at me with the same expression, but with slight concern. I was happy and she was friendly. I now know she wasn’t just praising me for my choice of ice cream flavour, or selection of sweets, or sugar-coated nuts. I know now that her eyes asked me if I was okay, if I felt safe.

I had always felt safe. I don’t remember it being any different. I loved him, I still do. And yet every time I see a picture of me as my younger self,or think back to what I do vividly remember, my eyes can’t help but flood with tears. And I don’t know why, and it’s frustrating. I felt loved, yet I hear things, of my time there, that seem to justify this supposed childhood trauma – but I don’t remember. It frustrates me. It frustrates me. Here’s what frustrates me:

You’d walk up the stairs, greet the rather pathetic but equally brutal guard dog, enter the hall quietly, and ascend up the second set of stairs – these louder, creakier and scarier than the first. You’d knock and wait, and wait, and wait, for someone to open the door – until you’d finally stomp your foot and force the unlocked door open yourself. I was a child, and it was heavy, the door, the burden, the footsteps of he who would finally come to visit many months later. You’d enter, the TV on silent, or at least drowned out by the sound of the parrot I hated. You’d find her asleep in the room you thought was yours, and him right next to her on the bed. They loved one another, it was obvious. Sure, they fought, but everyone had issues, and it wasn’t your place to interfere – they weren’t your parents. Your parents had asked you to behave. “They will take care of you, they will keep you safe. You can trust them. Take care.” You’d need to pee, but you were scared of going outside, it was dark, so you’d find the assigned bucket and try not to fall into it. You’d turn to the other bucket and, once the tap had performed its role, you’d continue to perform yours, and stand in this bucket, splash water over your gritty arms and legs and feet for ‘bath’, and you were happy. You were genuinely really happy. You’d paint on paper plates, and weave pieces of paper together, and flick through pages of the newspaper published weeks ago as the sun set over and over again. You could not have imagined life any other way. There was not much else you could have wanted. But you’d wait for your parents to come back, and you’d wait, and wait, and wait and it’s now cold. You’ve waited for months. But you were happy– you had the corner store, a grandfather and his girlfriend that loved you, it was routine. This was your routine. And when they finally came to see you on your birthday, you’d run to her, not your mother. “Is that mama?” you’d ask – she was part of an ideal, an escape you never thought you’d need or want but were always subconsciously longing for. The first few weeks without her must have been hard, but you pulled through, you were a good girl. But then as months passed by, you regretfully started to forget just how emotionally dependent on mama you had once been. The characters in your bedtime stories always had parents, Gretel had Hansel at least, but you disliked the Little Match Girl. Her story would make you cry. She couldn’t have been real, she was alone, and everyone had someone. And you weren’t like her. You weren’t alone, obviously.