'Write Your Life Story In Five Paragraphs or Less.'
I remember my childhood through extreme weather conditions. As it so happens, Britain is mostly drizzle, it’s not America with hurricanes and droughts and snowstorms. Yet, all my memories are accompanied by the blistering heat or the freezing snow. The memories themselves are also extreme. It’s either meeting my newborn sister for the first time, her tiny warm fist clenching my finger. Otherwise, it’s being running to school with excitement at the prospect of my mother going to parent teacher day; I fell over, ruined my knees and the day.
Through primary school I floated like a lingering breeze. Memories offer themselves to me like a bag of Revel chocolates. I pick a toffee, and remember playing in the fields with the other children, enjoying the way my plaits bounced as I skipped. I pick a coffee, and remember the bitter argument with a girl who did gymnastics. She made fun of me for not having a Dad, so I retorted, “I’d rather have no father than a fat mother.”
And then the sirens started so for high school I hid away in a bomb shelter. Waited in isolation for the destruction to stop.
And then I breathed again; there were many goodbyes but also many hellos. If I was to give you one piece of advice it would be to go to university, live in a different city for a while and meet new people. I have changed. There is no doubt about that, whether it be for better or for worse. But when it is midnight and we decide to bake a cake just for the heck of it, I know I am living the good times.
My last paragraph must be dedicated to him. You said, one night when you were low and I wasn't by your side, that you felt like leaving and going to a new city. To which I replied, "At your word I would get in my car and go." Though you should know that, if that ever was to happen, we would be listening to Taylor Swift's 1989 the entire way. To be continued.