Unfair

My friend recently suggested I visit the annual fair in the town where we grew up. For her, this must have seemed a natural thing because I think she was happy in our little town. But after all these years I don't think she knows how much I hated that place.

I do have some happy memories... of digging down in giant tubs of cornmeal for bubble gum and dimes, of egg tosses, whirly rides, homemade pie, Saturday night street dances. I remember my mother gently loading a beautiful gingerbread house into the back of our car to enter in the cake decorating contest. A pencil sketch of one of our half-wild kittens for which she won a ribbon. For that weekend, anyway, the kids in town were princes and princesses in cut-off shorts. We carried the massive fortune of $10 and whatever money we won for ribbons in our frayed pockets.

But this is also the town that I ran helplessly through -- only to be caught and beaten by an older, bigger girl. A town where I was spit on, assaulted and humiliated. A place where my heart was broken more than one time. This is the town that threatened to take me from my father. Where kids hated me and grown people looked right through me. Where I was humiliated in to putting back groceries because I didn't have enough money.

The thought of those times has nearly obliterated my memories of childhood delight.

This is the place that only remembers me as I was: a mouthy kid, a helpless, out-of-control daughter of a broken home. I was the girl who lived in a trailer on a gravel road on the edge of town. I was the hacked off corner of a painful lover's triangle. When I am there, I am no longer the "me" I made, instead I shrink to the "her" they made.

I need this distance to reclaim what happy memories I can. I won't rule out ever going back but for now there's no peace in a place that was so unfair.