Emotional Detachment and Moral Indifference.

Tragic.

I promised my mom I'd meet her down at the house we grew up in. When I say "we" I think I mean me in conjunction with all the abnormal coping mechanisms I relied on to survive childhood, but really it could have any other number of profoundly disturbing meanings that I'd rather not elaborate on. (Disjointed view of Reality. Anyone?) Mom is functionally retarded when it comes to electronics, so she asked me to take pictures of the property with the digital camera she bought me... elementary ethics said I had no choice but to oblige her request.

The place is used up worse than a 70's porn star. Seriously. It looks like the absolute worst kind of worn out shit, even more so than I remembered. Someone painted the exterior a hideous artificial salmon color that I imagine could only be replicated in nature if some greedy fuck were to eat too much candy corn and proceed to vomit all over the sidewalk. Naturally, the color palette preference was my mother's. She is renting the house out... again. The last tenants must have finally made contact with reality and left. Presumably for someplace more EXOTIC and UPSCALE, like say Mexico or the local 711, or some other fucking shithole of a toxic waste dump who's location now eludes me.

A collection of discarded debris and unsightly trash is proudly displayed about the front lawn. Metallic junk and biodegradable oddities coexists along side one another seemingly without rhyme or reason. It almost feels like some pretentious asshole of an artist tried to paint the yard using a novel technique which combines the impressionist movement with a deranged splash of surrealism... and he failed. Miserably.

I quickly finished taking pictures and stood around looking anxious. Escape was imminent. I glanced at my watch, at the car, and then back at my watch again. The mother was rambling on in her usual dysfunctional manner, speaking a combination of flawless spanish and heavily accented broken english. She mixes the two interchangeably, apparently unaware of the disjointed effect it adds to the context of any given situation. Sometimes I watch her as she speaks... Her explosive black eyes creating deep creases in a gaunt and aging face. Her frantic arm gestures making maniacal movements through the air. It's half entertainment spectacle, half ego-infested delusional psychosis really. I can see her mouth moving, and hear the words, but very rarely does any actual comprehension take place. It's almost funny really. I take my conversational cues from physical gestures. I know when to laugh, when to smile, when to nod sympathetically. I haven't processed a meaningful communication from her in years.

This went on for a good ten minutes or so, until suddenly I found myself being herded towards the front door like so much delicious cattle. Fuck futility and family. Welcome to the Slaughter House kids.

My problem with trips down memory lane is this: Unlike most of you, my memory has no well lit lane, no dirty back road, not even so much as a vaguely placed foot path. It's more like traveling along a mine field at night while drunk. In pitch black darkness. I mean, of course I can remember THINGS, I'm not a fucking vegetable, or god forbid a republican. But whenever a random memory pops up, I instantly instruct my consciousness to repress it. This has become my default response to the past. The memory in question could be pleasant or painful (although I'll be honest, the overwhelming majority constitute the latter). Any emotional attachment is incidental. It is through this process that I have managed to block out approximately 90% of my entire childhood. It's never really caused a problem as I can usually retrieve a particular recollection if the need ever arises, and then turn around and dispose of it afterwards just as quickly. Certain events will always remain unhidden though... vivid and fractured, as real today as in the moment they first were written.

So it was easy for me you see. This soon to be repressed stroll down memory lane. Awkward of course, walking from room to empty room, methodically examining the filthy floors and ceilings stained from years of secrets. I never saw them there, waiting for me. Whatever family might have lived inside these walls years ago was no where to be seen. Certainly not my father, sitting in shadows at the computer over there in the den. Smoking cigarette after yellow cigarette in a tiny windowless room already filled with smoke. Alone in his corner, hiding from my mother, hiding from a world that he never quite understood. How the fuck did he not suffocate? I'd love to speculate, but there was no one left with which to reminisce.

My mom kept following me around asking, "Does this bring back bad memories?" over and over again in a hopeful voice. What the fuck bitch! Stop trying to be funny. I didn't bother to respond. Then I entered my old room. It was now half the size it used to be. I could not comprehend what had happened. This was like some bizarre optical illusion ten years in the making. If you ever want concrete evidence that you have evolved as a human being, I highly recommend returning to your old house to stand inside the room in which you grew up. I was musing to myself philosophically now. The place couldn't have shrunk, I must have grown, only none of it actually made an impression until...

And then it came back to me. Not so much a single memory as a flow of feelings drawn out and spilled across a sea of years. I was laying in my bed and it was night. A dead quiet. Everyone had gone to sleep and the screaming had finally stopped. The house was calm again. I pushed my face hard against my pillow and cried. Tears of frustration, and self pity, and the infinite unfairness of it all were streaming down my warm cheeks. It burned my eyes. Every night in that house I cried myself to sleep. Being a child I invented a make believe reason as to why this was happening to me. A hopeful twisted rationalization to tell myself each night in order to make it all better. It was Okay. Crying these tears cleansed my eyes of all the dirt and pain caused by life. It made them clear again. And I told myself that someday I would have the brightest green eyes in the whole world...

But it's ten years later now and I'm all grown up. When I look in the mirror I know I was wrong. My eyes are cloudy and bloodshot, and much like the rest of my life, virtually unrecognizable. But then again I haven't really cried in what seems like years. Back then it was so easy. I could still feel the mortal pain and injustice of it all. That was before I took to erasing everything. Now the only thing I feel is numb.

But I still tell myself that it's okay. I look better with my eyes closed anyways.