A Childhood of Happiness
My childhood came to an end at age nine when my mother abandoned me to the care of my father. With that my childhood came to an end and with it my happiness.
As the process of which I have elsewhere written of comes to a close I begin to understand what the process consists in. Trauma. That event, the abandonment of her eldest child, signaled for me the end of being an object or person offered unconditional love. Was I traumatized on other occasions by my father’s treatment of me? Possibly. I can’t say with any certainty. I am not a medical man. Yet I know were I to write of this process I would offer the world something significant. Can I write of those experiences that traumatized me and of the subsequent recovery which I call the process? Possibly. Am I inclined to write of that pain experienced at the time and have experienced since and as part of this process of what you might call recovery? I can’t say for now.
What I can say is that the person who I began to be aware of some weeks ago, who seemed familiar and wrote of, is the me I had not seen in a long time. A long, long time. I have not seen that person since I was nine. Since 1954. A very long time. But then some people never recover as I have done. am doing. Some people have never known the love I once knew. So I am fortunate. Fortunate indeed.
What I am witnessing is not simply a transformation but a transfiguration. As I go forward I am going to touch and effect every person who comes in contact with me.
Yes, I am fortunate. But there was a lot of pain along the way. I don’t wish that on anyone.
Malcolm D B Munro
Tuesday 25 October, 2016
