A Broken Cradle

It is said that most of us can’t remember our lives before the age of five. Mental development still building and new experiences overload tend to push out those early memories of two, three, and four; those bittersweet pieces of life, fragments of being that make us who we now are. So it is ironic that most people, by the age of five, are basically formed in their personality as to who they will be, how they will turn out as adults. Medical professionals will tell you there is an exception to this rule—trauma. A crimson shadow of a crumpled body reflecting off the wall; the small, fragile frame of a child: confused, hungry, left abandoned on a wet mattress. I was two. I remember. I remember it all.