Childhood Memories

by JohnnyC28

Take a look back into the childhood of The Undergroundman.

Extension of Notes From Underground

"Even now, after so many years, all this comes back to me as very unpleasant. A great deal that comes back to me now is very unpleasant, but . . . perhaps I should end these Notes here?...After all, to tell you long stories about how, for example, I ruined my life through moral decay in my corner, by the lack of appropriate surroundings, by isolation from any living beings, and by futile malice in the underground-so help me God, that's not very interesting."

Part III – Childhood Memories

Some people have a childhood garden
Filled with green and growing things
Some people have a childhood garden
Filled with purple peonies
Mine is sere
Throughout the year
Nothing grows here

Some people have a childhood rainbow
A sea of colors all aglow
Some people have a childhood rainbow
Red to violet in a row
Mine is gray
Bow of clay
Without a ray…

-From the poetry of F. B. Blues

I.

That is the story of my childhood. I remember my childhood very vividly as if it were yesterday. At this point, you're probably saying to yourself, "This man is crazy!" or find yourself asking "Is there a method to all this madness that he is portraying?" Well, in this section of my notes you might be able to find the answer and justification that you're looking for. As I said in my previous notes, I never associated myself with anyone. I avoided any human interactions, talking with others, and retreated further and further into my own state of mind, my own corner. Even at school I tried to avoid my fellow classmates as much as I possibly could because of the lone fact that I didn't trust them. As a young boy, I couldn't trust anyone. I never had many friends. Actually, let me rephrase that, I never had any good friends. Sergei Gorbachova, my first friend ever. I was never actually allowed to hang out with him because of my mother, but she is a whole different story which I will soon explain. Sergei and I were best friends; well he was my only friend, until Alexandra came. She was beautiful. She was the type of girl that would have the entire world bow at her feet. All the guys liked her. This I am sure of. Especially me. For once in my life, I attempted to try and talk to her, on several occasions actually. However, these attempts always fell short because of the incredible nervousness that would consume my entire body. However, this was not the case for Sergei. Sergei started talking to her more and more everyday and starting talking to me less and less. Before I knew it, Sergei was making up these excuses to avoid talking to me. I knew they were lies, blatant, sorry, stupid lies just so he could have the pleasure of talking with that devil girl Alexandra. I started to gain such a hate for her because she was slowly taking away my only friend. At this point in time, I don't know if I was even allowed to call Sergei my friend. It seemed as if every time I would call him my friend, he acted as if a piece of his reputation was being ripped off just as a piece of my helpless heart was being ripped away every time he chose to lie to me and chose to ignore me for that girl. They became best friends and started not to even bother with acknowledging me in the least bit. I once again became best friends with the corner that I would always crawl into whenever I was face to face with adversity. It was in this corner where I found peace. It was here where I was most happy. It was here where I was…alone. Finally, I gathered up the courage to confront Sergei. I approached Sergei with the most confidence that I could possibly build up at the time and was sure to leave there with an answer. Like usual, Alexandra was seen attached to his left arm. It seemed nowadays that they would have to be surgically removed from each other to break them apart. The site of it made me sick.

II.

"Why is it that we haven't talked in such a long time?" I asked with fierce curiosity. At first, it seemed like Sergei didn't even notice me standing right in front of his face and didn't even hear me asking him a question. I was getting to the point where I wanted to lash out every negative comment that I could possibly come up with at him. However, like a gentleman, I asked him once again. Finally he actually took the time out of his day and acknowledged me.

Sergei beckoned Alexandra to leave them alone with a mere flick of his chin, acting as if this lame conversation were to be over within a few brisk moments. The facial expression that was on Alexandra's face seemed as if she had just been robbed of her most valuable asset. It completely disgusts me how people value their whole life upon single, useless obsessions that they think would make their lives exponentially better. You probably think that I am being totally one-sided towards these types of people. Well I can say right now that you are probably right. If you were to put so much value to an object, why not value something important like nature? I envy everything that has to do with nature. I wish I could be part of nature, such as an animal of any sort. Not having to worry about petty human issues like the one I'm going through now would be far better off. I wish to become a part of nature, anything ranging from a huge masculine lion to a small insect. I still wait for my wish to be granted.

"Well, you…" he began saying then stopped. Throughout this silence it seemed as if my confidence, reputation, and pride were being drained out through the eagerness of what he was about to say. So many things were running through my mind at this point.

"Well, you aren't very fun" he proclaimed. This left me in awe. After he said this, he immediately turned away to re-clinch hands with that vicious, vulture Alexandra. I couldn't help but notice that once they turned their backs on me, they started to talk and giggle just as if they were talking about me and how "non-fun" I am. I would have much rather had him give me some dignity and punch me in the face. I probably would have been less affected by that, I kid you not. But those words, they were like sharp daggers coming from every angle piercing every one of my organs preventing me from doing any type of bodily function.

III.

I hated him. I hated them both. I hated him so much to the point where I wanted to unleash every evil part of me onto him. "Go up to him, turn him around, and punch him right in his conceited face." I found myself saying that within my head. "Hit him as hard as you can, make fun of him, and then spit at him hoping that he is suffering the same amount that he has made you suffer." These thoughts kept running through my mind and kept telling me that I should go do it. "Make him remember you for this. If you go strike him, he'll have to notice you every time he sees you to know to get ready to defend himself. Do it!" I know, you probably think that boys so young don't express such feelings. You probably think that I'm joking. You might say that hate is too strong of a word that a young man like me at the time would use against a fellow classmate. But if a man says he hated someone, why not believe the hate he felt towards that person? Why doubt him? I believe that it is at these younger days where you express your feelings the most. You follow these natural laws that condemn you to feel anger, sadness, contentment, revenge and many other feelings that make you want to express them in the most meaningful way possible. It's natural to have either positive or negative feelings towards someone regardless of age. Feeling hatred towards someone is relatively the same thing as feeling physical pain. The pain is there nonetheless, as much as you don't want it to be, you find yourself enslaved to the pain. You're entirely consumed by the pain of which you can not run away from. You're completely enslaved until the neuro-response to an outside stimulus that causes discomfort is completely gone. However, until that point in time where the pain has vanished, you feel the hatred still inside you towards that specific person. The pain becomes worse and worse and builds up as you become more and more spiteful towards everything, as it goes on and on for the days and nights that pass by, still feeling this pain that is consuming your entire body. It is found lingering all throughout your body until you breach the point where there is absolutely no way to get around it but to release it. Release it through the actions that you choose to make. Gentlemen, I'm deeply convinced that the pain will exponentially grow if you keep it held up inside you. Any noble man would agree that the best way to get rid of your anger is to release it by any means possible. This hatred kept building up in me more and more every time that I would pass by them. I couldn't help but notice that they would pay no attention to me at all and completely ignored the mere fact of my existence as if I were just a simple molecule floating around while they were grasped into the bottomless hole of love. The hatred built up to the point where I couldn't contain it anymore. I had to release it. I hated them. I hated them both.

IV.

So what did I do you ask? Absolutely nothing. I accepted it. Accepted the mere truth that I was not meant to have friends. It might have seemed like I took it as a composed individual from their stand point, however, I was completely torn apart on the inside and I could have sworn that my heart had two separate beats because of the fact that it had broken in half. One half filled with uncontrollable anger, the other with devastating grief. So what is to be done? I'm convinced that you, the reader, are probably saying why don't you go out and get some new friends? I don't need friends. Maybe this is why I have trouble becoming friends with people. This reason alone. As I said before in my previous notes, a man only needs his own independent desire. I found myself working much better when I'm alone than having to have the burden of relying or depending on another person. Once I started to realize how better off I was being alone, I started to think more rationally about things and started to read books. I know, Gentlemen, that you probably think that I'm explaining myself and telling you my childhood story just so I can get on your good side. Well I can tell you this, I don't have to explain myself to anyone. That is part of my independence and that is what society these days needs. That is to be done.

V.

"Ha, ha, ha!" You laugh. "What kind of poor soul is that deeply affected by a minute incident like that? Get over it!" Gentlemen, I know you are saying this at this point. Well, gentlemen, Sergei was not my only problem that I had to deal with as a child. I'm sure you were thinking that I was acting like such an immature child but no, no, no. There was something much worse, something just as bad as being diagnosed with a fatal disease, having to live with the sickness for all the years to come. There was no miracle cure for this disease, it was something that you were stuck with and as much as you tried, you could never get rid of it, something that has such an enormous effect on kids that it can either benefit immensely or cause harm drastically. That fatal disease was…my mother.

I knew since the day I met Sergei that it would only lead to trouble. I knew that I wouldn't be able to give him enough time of the day to be able to be a normal friend. This is where my mother came in. Throughout my whole life, it was always her telling me what to do. She was like the crazy drill sergeant that you must encounter that yells and screams and directs you to do everything the entire time of training camp. If my life was basically led through the directions of what my mother would always tell me, what was the point in living at all? "What is the point of living at all?" I found myself asking myself this on several occasions starting from a very young age. It seemed like there was absolutely no point in living if I couldn't live independently. Living your own life independently is the most essential thing you can take from my notes, Gentlemen. It is independent thinking which allows free thought. If you lead this life in which I so desire to live, I envy you to the utmost. I wasn't allowed to have friends at all because my mother thought that they would get in the way of my studies and learning capabilities. Now you see Gentlemen, why it was only natural for me to always be on my own and how I would always move further and further into my own corner whenever there was some type of adversity facing me. As a young boy, I tried to rebel against my mother's directions as much as I possibly could without her knowing. This is why I mentioned that I spent most of my time at home reading. It seemed like I had escaped all the negative aspects of my life by just reading a simple book. I store my books within a secret storage space that I knew of, hoping that she would never find it. While reading books, I learned of so many different emotions that I couldn't have learned out in the open world due to so many restrictions put upon me by my mother. Naturally, I encountered the emotions of hate and anger at every waking moment of every new day. While reading these books, I learned confusion, grief, contentment, agitation, frustration and many more different emotions. I enjoyed reading so much to the point where I always had to carry two or three books with me at a time just incase if my mother found the secret spot where I hid them. Lord only knows what she would do to me if she were to find out that I was having fun and enjoyed reading instead of reading books for just studying purposes only. See Gentlemen, I am better off learning on my own. It is the only way I know how to learn. Constant verbal abuse and constant yelling is what kept me in line. Still, I'm sure the question "how did he still have so much anger when he was young?" is still lingering in the back of your minds. Well Gentlemen, here's the answer to that question.

VI.

One day, on a Wednesday, I came home eager to read the new book that I had just gained a liking for. I was going to do my normal routine of walking to my corridor as quickly as I possibly could to avoid any type of encounter or confrontation with my mother. While I was walking in, the atmosphere of the house felt very awkward. It felt as if it was the same scenery coming out of a book that I had read, only this felt a lot more real and a lot grimmer. For some reason it felt as if I was walking to my grave, cold shivers going up and down my body, not knowing what force was just about to hit me. It was her. "It's nothing," I thought to myself. "Just another usual day of yelling and screaming, telling me to go straight to my studies and not come out until I learned three times as much as we had in school." It occurred to me that this was not the case once I saw scraps of paper all over the table. She had found them. She had found my books. I don't think I can describe in words the feelings that had just overwhelmed me at that time. There she was cutting up every single book that I had hid and was cutting away at the pages that I enjoyed reading. I don't think she knew that I was directly behind her. I was in a state of awe. Not giving any attention to anything surrounding me but focused only on the fact that she had found my books and is destroying all these objects of my affection. I couldn't let her do that. I had to do something.

I ran back to my room. While doing so, I felt the sense of warm liquid running from my eyes down my cheeks. They were tears that arrived from the emotion of being sad. That I had learned from one of my favorite books. I sat there on my bed, dazed and confused about what I should do. But then it hit me. "Why am I always the one to back down first?" I thought to myself. "Why should I be told what to do? Why can't I lead my own life?" So I had my plan set. I would go over there and confront my mother. I smiled contemptuously at the mere fact that I was finally going to stick up for myself while pacing back and forth in my room waiting for the right time to unleash all of my powerful thoughts. I wanted to show her that I can be successful on my own without her constant scolding and constant critiquing. I wanted to shower her that…There she was. Standing right outside my room. I tell you Gentlemen, that I could have sworn I saw fire lit in her eyes like the devil himself. It took her about five minutes to gather herself and begin to start screaming at me. During those five minutes I sweated profusely from the anxiety of what was about to come. I thought to myself, "What is she going to do? Will she lock me in my room so I have no possible way to encounter a book? Is she going to kill me? Why is she doing this to me? What for? What for?" However, I then remembered what my previous plan was, to unleash my fury on her. "So, here it is, this is where my last stand would be," I thought to myself. I was trying to get in the mindset of the soldier that I had read about in one of my books. So I immediately dried up the sweat and took, which I thought might have possibly been my last, deep breath. So there I went. Gentlemen, I tell you, I unleashed all of the anger, pain, and suffering of which I had held up in my body for so long. And now, after I finished what I had to say, I felt happy, content, successful, and most importantly…independent.

"What concerns me in particular, is that in my life I've only taken to an extreme that which you haven't even dared to take halfway; what's more, you've mistake your cowardice for good sense; and, in so deceiving yourself, you've consoled yourself. So, in fact, I may even be "more alive" than you are…Leave us alone without books and we'll get confused and lose out way at once-we won't know what to join, what to hold on to, what to love or what to hate, what to respect or what to despise…But enough; I don't want to write any more "from Underground. . . ."