distant

You know how you'll get these random little flashes of unbidden memory popping up through your day? In the past few days (or longer? I don't know), a weirdly large number of mine have been about his parents' house. The old one, they haven't even lived there for however-many years now.

Why am I thinking of that? And why the house, the sensory experience of the house, more than the people in it? It's really strange.

But, whether as a cause or an effect, I've been turning over some of those memories in my mind. They feel claustrophobic. They feel despairing at times. I wasn't happy in that sensory environment: sometimes because he wasn't, that was a constant tension when he was around his family... But sometimes I was unhappy just for myself. Sometimes we were just broke and they wanted him there because he didn't have a job to be at. Sometimes I felt like time was just something I had to get through. I wasn't happy.

And I wonder if all I'm supposed to do right now is feel those memories and let myself consciously acknowledge how unhappy I was, because that was something I could never have let myself admit even to myself at the time. Or at any time until this year.

It's a sad realization, the depth of those bad feelings. I'm sad for my younger self but I'm sad in the present too. I guess that's something I can have in common with my younger self.