I’m Ok. You’re Ok.

Perhaps it had something to do with the small room

Photo by Evan Reimer on Unsplash

O r the hot tears that flowed down my face on that hot San Jose summer in 1971 or so.

It seems that my future was decided. The attempts to get out of my room. The lack of connection. Even though there is no doubt I was a loved child, for these reasons it occurred as though I was not.

A few things were clear: As much as I hated the space I found myself in on those sweltering summer days, I loved watching the magenta sunsets float by just outside my bedroom window with the trellis canopy lining the sky with rows of brown wood interspersed between spurts of yellows, pinks, and purples.

I would cry myself to sleep on most nights like this. Content with being a disconnected toddler, apart from the world. I would go on to feel this contentment and yet dread at every instance where I had to occupy solitary air without another human being to rely on.

I would usually give out one last resounding, vibrato cry in hope of capturing the attention of a sympathetic adult nearby, but no one was coming for me.

I fell asleep in a pile of my toys and woke up half-asleep to my mother lifting me out of the pile and into my bed for the night.

A brilliant plan devised by my sometimes playful and oddly sinister pediatrician. Now at least my mother could get some sleep and I would try to recover from those first moments of trauma and hopefully forget it all the next day.

But unfortunately, that didn’t happen.