The Memories I Never Had

The truth is… when I think back on my childhood, I don’t have the kind of stories most people share with ease. No bedtime tales, no birthday candles, no warm “first day of school” photos tucked neatly into an album. My memories aren’t snapshots of joy — they’re scattered fragments of survival.

There are so many blank spaces where memories should be. No one ever told me about my first laugh, my first crawl, or the silly toddler things I must’ve done. Did anyone clap when I took my first steps? Did anyone lean down, arms open, cheering me on? I’ll never know. Those moments — if they happened — were never told to me.

Instead, I remember the silence. The emptiness. The questions I asked myself when I got old enough to understand what I had missed.

I don’t remember my mother celebrating milestones, or even being present for them. Did she smile when I spoke my first word? Did she kiss my forehead when I ran a fever? Did she even notice when I fell and scraped my knee? I don’t recall any of it.

And that’s the truth that still lingers — I don’t recall.

You would think, being an only child, my mother and I would’ve had a bond. That she would’ve wanted to see me shine, to cheer me on, to be my safe place when the world laughed. But instead, there was distance. Silence. Coldness.

And sometimes I wondered if the real reason was this: every time she looked at me, maybe she didn’t just see me — maybe she saw him. The man who left her. The man who left us both. And maybe, just maybe, that made me the short end of the stick from the very start.

But where does a child place all that pain? Where does a child put the questions no one will answer?

To be continued…