A Beginning, Some Middle, But Not the End
I was born to keep my sister company; she was an accident
My Mother wasn’t ready to conceive; that’s what she has said…
She was sorry to be bothered; but my Father wasn’t disappointed
Despite hardship, and bother; separations, and the spewing of vomit…
For me he wasn’t sorry at all; hating the idea of living among people
Said he couldn’t live in the end with anyone at all; except for me…
I know it isn’t all true; he would truly have been so very lonely
But I’m flattered to believe it; though finding fault like any child…
I now see that we really were two of a kind; and miss him a lot.
Where to Begin
With a title such as "origin story" my first thought is of a super hero. And while I would gladly snag the title of Batman, Ironman, Superman, Spiderman, Dr. Strange, or Black Panther, I somehow feel that the normal, perhaps boring me, would be a better fit all around in my current place and time. The simple answer is, I don't want the responsibility of a world shoved on my shoulders. So, with this little intro snippet out of the way, I shall begin.
Since you want an origin story, I shall start at the very beginning and give you a condensed version of my life. Way back, (not so many years ago), I was born in a small humble home to two lovely parents (who are still around, and are still lovely, although they have their quirks). My birth seemingly was an intense struggle between life and death because apparently I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, and I was turning blue. Thanks to a wonderful coincidence, the midwife did not get on the plane she had intended to take and had instead accompanied the midwife in training out to our house, and to my birth. Had she not been there, I would not be here. Or so I have been told. After all, I was there but I don't remember a thing about it.
Skip forward a few years and you will find me a spoiled rotten child who, for some unknown reason, hated smiling in pictures. There are very few pictures of me between the age of 3 and 6 (I am guessing a little on the actual ages) where I am smiling. I do believe the reason I was such a rotten child was because I was the youngest in the family for about three years and my oldest sister, bless her, spoiled her baby brother. Until of course my little sister, the youngest member of the family, was born. Then I became the terrible child. Why? Because someone else was getting the attention that I had so greedily absorbed. Thankfully, these are years that I have very little recollection of.
Let us jump another few years to the point where I started piano lessons, but we shan't spend much time here. Suffice it to say, my mother, in her wisdom, required that, if her children wanted to learn a musical instrument, would have to take two years of piano lessons before moving onto said other musical instrument. I had my heart set on playing the drums (what little boy doesn't have this fantasy at some point or other), but instead I took piano. And I am so very glad that I did.
Several years later, I did in fact get a drum set. I had taken piano lessons for about five years or so, and I had thoroughly fallen in love with it. And after just a few short years the drum set started to gather dust, but the piano has not had a break since I started lessons way back when. (The piano I first started playing on was a lovely upright grand, but it was an old piano and it started to die. We ended up replacing it with a slightly less old piano that was equally beautiful, and that is the one we still have to this day.)
Jump ahead again, and you find a teenager, awkward and home schooled. (I should note that I was actually home schooled from the beginning and also that I wasn't awkward because of it. I would have been awkward in public school as well.) For me, high school went by in a blur. I can't pick out many details about this or that, let alone tell you from specifically what year they were. In the summer of my Junior year, I started working full time at an IT company, and I really enjoyed it. I worked part time throughout my senior year, and that was perhaps a mistake. I liked the job, but working and trying to study school was not really conducive, and school work started to fail. However, during my high school years, I fell in love with writing, and creating my own world. This, and music, has become my easy escape from reality. I wish to continue to write, and I wish to continue to play the piano.
What's that? You want to try to jump ahead another year or so.... Well I'm sorry, we can't. We've caught up to where I am. I am enrolled to enter college in the fall and I will see what life brings me. I intend to follow a career in the computer world, and hopefully a side career in writing. This last thing has been encouraged by the wonderful group of Prosers that I would gladly call friends. Yes, that means you... the reader.
I am a slightly private person, and rather shy; but I can hid behind the title Charlton_Ghosh, and I can still let the world know the story of how I got here.
...Or at least the rather condensed version...
~C.G.
P.S. Vacation is great, but I couldn't let this challenge go by un-entered. :)
My Origin?
Hmm, I guess birth is an obvious answer, but there is another. Before middle school, I didn't like to read or write, and had no creativity to make up a story, or find out I was really good at it. But after I was diagnosed with leukemia the doctor says I had to stay home, so I was home schooled for the first time. One of my assignments was to write certain poems like sonnets and haikus. It was my sonnet about my nephew that impressed the teachers, and said I was good at it. I liked my sonnet, too. So I decided to read and write more when I came back to regular school. I guess my origin started after my 14th birthday, when I became sick and changed.
My world was black and white, divided with a boarder line, but after seeing reality the two colors mixed. Anything can be both bad and good at the same time. A blessing can become a curse, a curse can become a blessing.
Weathered
I started off as any regular old kid. I was born in Colorado, but I don't remember that much since I was three when we moved to Florida. In Florida, I went to a private elementary school- mostly because my parents liked the curriculum and our church paid half the tuition.
The kids were normal. We had an odd ratio of Ukrainian students in the school for some reason, and they were a little more standoffish than others, but, overall, they were the same as every other kid.
I didn't realize it at the time because I was an optimistic, naive child that could see no evil in the world, but I was picked on quite a lot. I always thought they were joking and laughed with them, so I don't think they enjoyed it quite as much as when they could make other kids cry.
I had one really great friend in school, though. We met in first grade. She made me laugh when I had hurt myself in PE, and we were friends at once.
Life was going well, normal. But then something I had never expected happened... My parents decided that we were going to move. And no, not to another neighborhood, county, or even another state. My parents felt called to be missionaries- to South America.
It was such a surreal thing that I don't think I truly understood what that meant until we had been in Peru for about a year.
At first, things felt like a vacation. It was fun. It was all brand new. It was temporary. I was still just that naive child that saw the best in the world.
My brother and I were put into a local school to learn Spanish. Which...had it's own fair share of troubles, but I left that school almost fluent in the language and with a friend I don't think I'll ever lose.
She had been my rock in a sea of misunderstanding. She spoke English and could help me. She made that time in school infinitely easier and infinitely more bearable. I don't know how things would have gone without her.
Things were happy. There were other missionary families. We had huge Thanksgivings and Fourth of Julys. It all felt like just a huge supply of blessings and happiness. I was so happy we had moved to the country.
But then we had to move to another city, where we would actually be working. We moved to a city where there was only one other missionary family, a few American couples, and the rest...strangers.
My brother had it easier because that other missionary family had two boys, one his age, one my age. And I played with them, no doubt, and it was fun, but at the end of the day, I didn't have anyone to talk to.
The people I thought were my friends from the States didn't respond to my messages online. I would see their lives, how great everything was, and I realized that mine would never be like that.
I was so happy at first. Everything was brand new, but slowly, slowly...that optimistic twelve year-old my parents brought to Peru just, disappeared as I realized that sometimes friends aren't really there for you. Sometimes things are just bad. Sometimes there isn't a bright side to your situation.
It was a long road of falling farther and farther into self-pity. I wouldn't admit it to myself, but I needed to find a bright side. Thing is, I didn't want to. I wanted to feel bad for myself. I wanted others to feel bad for me.
I had lost all communication from my friends, I felt like my parents didn't notice my deteriorating state, and I kept seeing people's smiling faces. I was subconsciously begging for attention. I needed to feel like someone cared about me.
After about a year and a half of slowly becoming a broken person, we met up with a missionary family from another city. We met half-way at a hotel, and they had a daughter my age.
She's the reason I'm not still on that melancholy path. I was still desperate for someone to care, so I told her how I was feeling. I laid it all out, without even thinking how weird it must have been. We were strangers.
But she was so kind. She talked to me. She said she was sorry. She just...listened. She gave me the attention I felt I had been missing. She made me realize that I could still be happy without those friends who abandoned me.
After that trip, when we got home, it all became clearer. Most of those friends I thought had abandoned me... I had been pushing them away. My parents had been right there for me, but I didn't want to see it.
So, I began the process of picking up the pieces I had torn myself into. But this time, I had those friends to talk to. I let my parents know when I was feeling down. The pieces sort of put themselves back together.
I know I'm not the person I used to be, but that's okay. I know I probably will never be that optimistic little child that laughed with the bullies at school, but I think I'm better off seeing the world for what it is.
The disappointment and ground-splitting realizations of change perhaps won't hit me as hard now. Those things won't be quite as ground-splitting but cracks in the sidewalk I can find my way around.
So, that's how I've ended up here. Not broken but not brand-new either. Weathered down, maybe, but I won't let myself fall into such disrepair again.