Digging.

Because of this post, over the last few days in the fatosphere, a lot of bloggers and commenters have been posting letters to their 14-year-old selves. The letters have been beautiful and practical, heartbreaking and wise. And of course, they’ve made me think about what I would tell myself at 14.

But the honest truth? I don’t really remember fourteen. I don’t remember much of anything before I was sixteen. Most of what I do recall has a snapshot quality that makes me wonder if I remember it from actual life or from a photo album somewhere. There are a few memories that are jagged and sharp and vivid enough to make my cheeks burn with shame, but not many, and even fewer joyful ones.

I lived my childhood in fear. My earliest memory finds me at three, cowering in a corner of the dining room, my father’s fury burning across me like fire. My first suicide note was written in shaky, freshly-learned cursive in the third grade.

I was a terrified and terrorized child, and certain that I’d earned it.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I could be alone in a room with my father.  I still struggle to make eye contact with him.

He will never apologize; I think his memory of my childhood is as fractured and self-protecting as my own.

He believes he was a good father.  I love him too much to tell him the truth.

But I believe there must be happy things in my childhood, hidden beneath the shifting silt of my fear.  I want to unearth them, to remember what I was like when I wasn’t afraid.

I want to rewrite my history.  Can that be done?