Tortured Soul, Yet Again

Much of my childhood I do not remember. I can only recall a handful of memories. Such as walking home with one shoe when I was about five-years-old. The teacher told us not to take off our shoes during play time on the playground. I did the exact opposite. A boy from my class threw one of my shoes down the drain. I can clearly remember the vision of me walking with one shoe. Probably thinking of the trouble I would get in. I also have a vague memory about my kindergarten or first-grade teacher using a projector light to cast a shadow on the wall so that our head and body could be traced on a large sheet of paper.

Other than those two memories, everything else is a blur. Even middle school and most of high school. Once, I tried remembering some of the names of a few of my best friends from high school. But I couldn’t. A lot of stuff I forgot intentionally. Other things, I believed just faded away. I didn’t remember that my sibling tried to commit suicide until I began writing my life story. Once I realized that memory, I mediated in bed and tried recreating what I could remember in chronological order. It was difficult.

But nothing prepared me for how I would feel after re-reading many of the poems I’d written during my childhood. To say the least, I was surprised to know that I still understood the meaning behind them and why they were written. As I collected poems that I felt would be most appropriate in Tortured Soul, I didn’t review or read them. I chose them by name, forgetting what details they entailed. But as I read through them, flashes of anger and hate, guilt and sadness overcame me. I had to stop and take deep breaths or conversate randomly with my son before beginning again. Even though I knew what to expect when I started back reading, it still didn’t numb all the emotions that came with it. There was one poem that made me cringe while going through it. It took me back to that exact moment and the image was as vivid as the day it happened. I hated the feeling.

This goes to show me why I decided to publish a collection of my old poems. I would like to get to a point in life where the thought of something or the smell and of course reading, doesn’t make me shiver from a past memory. I don’t want to run away from what I’ve hidden for so long. I believe that alone has tortured me the most.

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