stream of consciousness, reminiscing

She was young. She was a bit chubby, but not as fat as her father seemed to think she was. She was nervous and she cried too much, but at least she often did her crying when she was alone.

She had five siblings. Two of the boys were close enough to her age that she played and tousled with them a lot. One was a chubby-cheeked blonde and the other was a spindly, awkward redhead. Sometimes they included her, but they often paired up against her too. It was never completely mean-spirited, but they would tease.

She was confused that sometimes her mom stuck up for her, and often didn’t. Once the boys drew mustaches on the pictures in her American Girl catalog, and her mom scolded the boys for it. She remembered it so vividly because it was so strange and nice to be defended like that. It was near christmastime, and the catalog was full of wintery dolls’ clothes. That evening, she and her brothers had an orchestra concert to go to. They ate hot pockets for dinner. And she was glad that her brother had drawn the mustaches, because she was glad to be defended by her mother.

Other times, when she was far more upset, no one was there to help her. Sometimes, when she felt injured, she would run to her room and seethe. Often she’d cry with her face in a pillow or mutter “I hate them, I hate them” under her breath. Time would pass, and the bad feelings would slowly cave down into her chest again, like foam settling in a bottle of Pepsi.

She spent a lot of time trying to prove herself; as a good daughter, as a cool sibling, as a smart student, as one of the big kids. She felt responsibilities that she couldn’t number or name, she was weighed down all the damn time. I think that she was pretty somber and lonely as a kid, though it wasn’t like she didn’t enjoy life at the same time. I think she just felt out of place a lot.

She loved her guinea pigs, because they didn’t hurt her. When the first one died, she felt nothing. She froze over. She couldn’t even look at Snuffy’s body. Her mom came to get her and told her that it had happened. She saw the stiff body, the whitened eyes, and she just froze over and walked away as quickly as possible. All the heaviness in her chest became ice. She asked her brother to bury the body; she couldn’t do it alone. She asked for a new guinea pig right away. She felt a bit disloyal to Snuffy when she played with the new pet, Snickers, but at the same time she felt cruel to Snickers for always seeing him as a lesser replacement.

When she thinks about Snuffy’s death now, what she realizes, with the help of her therapist, is that it wasn’t just a pet dying. It was the death of her best friend, the only creature in her life who didn’t tease her or make fun of her or shame her or criticize her or make her feel inadequate and broken. He just did life with her. He loved her. He cuddled his warm little body against hers, and squealed happily when she fed him chopped celery or artisan pet treats from Walmart. She needed him, she relied on him, and then one day he was inexplicably gone with no goodbye or excuse, and she had to just figure out a way to move on, and so in a way his death taught her everything there is to know about life.