Who was I before I was me
Before I was shaped by society
Where was I before I was here
Before I had skin and teeth and hair...I miss being Nowhere. Nowhere's a place that doesn't exist, a place that never was. I know I've been there before, when I was young, before I had 'real' memories. I think of nowhere now and all I see in my mind's eye is a black hole. Nothing. It's how (I believe) I remember my 'babyhood'. Scientists report that our earliest childhood memories come from when we're about three or three and a half, though some individuals swear they have memories from when they were eighteen months. I feel my memories come from a much earlier time. A time when time was still and I was inanimate. When I saw things and didn't know what they were. When life would fade in and out and I didn't have to respond or participate actively in it. There were no responsibilities then. I was under no obligation to be part of society. I could just lie there and exist and that was enough. When I tell my sister this she laughs and says I'm making it up. Like how I swore I remembered the color of my cot (pink) only for my mother to tell me it had been white. Regardless, the nostalgia I feel for that 'made-up' time and place is real. I've recently been exploring my childhood memories. For some reason I see something or smell something that triggers some buried memory and I cry. I don't know why. It's not that I want my childhood back, I'm not MJ, but there are times when I want to reclaim certain childhood feelings and beliefs. Take for instance the first time I was ever affected emotionally by a movie. I must have been about four when I saw '
Nausicaa of the Valley'. At the end when the princess died I bawled my eyes out. It was then that I first discovered bad things happen to good people. I have never been affected like that by any movie since. Call it the loss of innocence if you will. Even now I still cry when I watch the end. Not because it makes me sad now, but because I remember how sad it made me all those years ago. To think I will never feel that way again is sad in it's own right, but it's a different kind. In Nowhere you don't feel sad, or anything else. It's a great place to be . The thing is I can't go there, it's like Neverland, not for adults. Once you grow up it becomes unattainable, nothing but a distant memory. I do miss it though.
