I will be remembered for being obscure. No one had ever fully understood me or my actions; I had mood swings as predictable as an earthquake, was as serious as the Joker, and I never told anyone the entire truth about why that was. My obscureness could only be attributed to one general time period, but was fragmented into hundreds of different memories of my childhood, each with their own cause and effect. However, it started with two big hits, both striking me when I was fairly young, only five years old.
I had had the two best friends that anyone could wish for; Rusty, a lovely golden retriever whom I was devoted to playing with and caring for, and Colton, a boy in my kindergarten class who was nearly as devoted to me as I was to Rusty. Every time I remember him, I like to think that things would have turned out differently for us. We could have gone to middle school together, maybe even the same college, and we might have remained best friends for years to come. With my two best friends at my side, I had once been a truly happy child with the entire world at my fingertips. I was intelligent and quite cute, with my brown curls and big hazel eyes. This deceived a lot of people, for while I was a well-behaved child, I had what could only be described as a volatile temper, exploding at the least little thing. If someone hit me, I would hit back harder than they had. If I had to share a toy with another child, I would destroy the object up to the point where it was unusable. Colton would help me calm down or prevent me from striking out at people in the kindergarten class; it was in kindergarten when the first blow came.
My mother had come and picked me up as usual; she was unusually quiet, but I noticed nothing else. As I was walking into the house however, I instantly sensed that something was wrong. A sick feeling of dread came over me and I was afraid. I knew something was wrong. I went to my father in the living room. He was standing up against the couch watching me. All warning signals went off. He would never come and greet me at the door. I always had to go up to his study if I wanted to talk. He looked me in the eye as I came up to him and told me straight out that Rusty was dead and how sorry he was. He had had a heart attack during the last thunderstorm and his health could not keep up with him anymore. I could not believe it. I searched the entire house and yard, and finally burst into tears as I found his chain, attached to nothing but a cement brick with no happy large golden retriever wagging his tail and waiting for me to come and play with him outside. My parents left me alone for the rest of the day, not saying anything if I abruptly dissolved into tears over dinner or in the car.
I bottled everything up after that. I was my parents’ first child; they knew next to nothing on how to raise me. I could not get them to see I was hurt. At daycare, people who cried were looked down upon and were considered babies. If I cried at home, my parents would behave awkwardly, unsure of what to do or say. I stopped my care-free ways and my happy-go-lucky lifestyle. I turned into a moody, serious child, becoming very shy and silent, even developing a fear of thunderstorms. I never told anyone the whole truth after that. If I had said I had hit someone, I would not mention that I had also knocked them to the ground. If I felt sad or depressed I put a bright smile on my face and pretended otherwise. I had become a brilliant actress and deceiver within the span of a few months. It soon became a habit to act differently from my real emotions, but this did not make anything any better. As kindergarten finished and vacation, I slowly came out of my stupor and began to take an interest in life again as the year swung into summer.
Summer ended, and first grade came, along with the second setback, erasing any vitality and verve I might have shown. Kindergarten had finished, and Colton’s parents were talking to mine about elementary schools. They talked for a little while and agreed to send us to the same school. We were put into separate classrooms and we slowly grew farther apart. The school year was only a few months in when the accident happened. I had come to school as usual and the teacher began discussing a new lesson that we would be learning that week. An hour later, we were all brought outside. No one knew what had happened; we were given orange ribbons and told to tie them to the fence outside by the playground. We did this. We had been standing outside for a while before we noticed anything unusual. There was a large tarp set up on the other side of the playground, and several adults were under it. We all began whispering to each other as I looked around. There was no sign of my friend. Before we went in our principal passed out orange balloons and we were directed to let go of them. We complied; my balloon was among the last to be released. It slowly floated upwards, a bright dot on the blue sky. It was not until a few days later that we learned the real truth. A kid in the first grade had been hit by a car while he had been biking to school, and he had died before the ambulances had gotten there. His name had been Kelton. I was one of the few first graders who knew about death and how nothing lasted forever. But nobody could have ever dreamed that it would hit so close to home, right down the road and a person from our number, a child.
The rest of the year went by, as did elementary school. The memories were slowly wiped away by new ones and I could only cling to the fact that my best friend was gone. One day, in seventh grade, we started talking about car accidents and it all came back. As I sat down to think about it, I remembered that my friend’s name had been Colton. The kid in the accident had been named Kelton. Or had it? Had I been mistaken for all those years? I never did see Colton again. I did not receive any news and my parents told me nothing; even now I still don’t know. But the way I figure it, it might be better off not knowing. If it was him, I would feel guilty about not knowing at the time. If it wasn’t him, I would probably wonder where Colton had gone and who Kelton really was. Either way, I still have feelings of guilt, grief and shock trickling through my soul as I slowly digest the fact that my friend, my best friend whom I had known since Pre-K, was gone.
Other memories from those days came and went, some good and some worse than Rusty and Colton. My emotions became hyper-active and ‘trigger-happy’. Nearly anything could set any emotion off at any time. I could never tell anyone about my childhood, of how when everyone else was afraid of ghosts in white sheets or the dark, I was afraid of the future and what other horror would come at me next. Tears came easily and quickly if I thought or talked about anything from my younger years. I became evasive to any question about my past, not saying anything or out rightly lying to people. And thus began my game of hide-and-seek, with me hiding the truth and other people looking for it.