Spare Me My Childhood

We assume our childhoods are past, that we have grown to maturity. Until our childhoods confront us. Recently, childhood memories I locked in a black box at the back of my mind are finding their way out. Part of me is mad at God. “God, why didn’t you come sooner? Didn’t you see me in that bleak bedroom bleating and begging? Didn’t you see me weeping and waving my hands?” “God, if you had come sooner I could have been spared from my best friend’s father, from the agony of my adolescence, from the dysfunction of my family – from me.”