everything falls apart 51

When I was 10 years old, I ran away from home. I was a latchkey kid, so when I got back from school that day, I dumped all the books from my backpack and started filling it with clothes. I knew there wouldn't be room for everything, so I went carefully through my drawers, picking out my favorites. There was a bright rainbow-striped T of which I was particularly fond.

My mother surely must've packed it off to some second-hand shop a long, long time ago. I wish I still had it. I wish I had buried it. Childhood mementos that you hang onto as an adult become contaminated with your more recent memories, but those things that belong exclusively to your past, those things that go away, they become wormholes to that other time. I'm not quite at middle age yet, but I'm getting there. I'm approaching an age at which the years I have in front of me are less numerous than the ones I have behind me. It would be nice if I had some way of reconnecting with my past so it could be actively, consciously a part of my life and not some mostly forgotten dream that could as easily belong to someone else.

So yeah, I packed my clothes and grabbed a few things from the refrigerator. I sat down to write a note. I thought it would be the mature thing to do.

"Dear Mom and Dad, I have decided to try things on my own for awhile. Do not try to find me. Know that I don't hate you. You have been..." What kind of parents have they been? Good or OK? I could go either way on it. I decided to be generous. "... good parents. I wish you the best."