I Before
On origin, constraint, and formation
I was born in 1968.
It was not a beginning.
It was a condition.
The country had already turned.
What followed did not resemble order.
My parents were not allowed to marry.
They lived under accusation, surveillance, and fear.
To be together was a risk.
To have a child, a consequence.
I was not expected.
I was not received.
There are no memories of infancy.
My earliest memory is not of a face,
but of a rusty coal stove,
and voices speaking in lowered tones:
We cannot be parents for this baby.
It was not cruelty.
It was a system in which care could not take form.
Attachment was dangerous.
Love had no stable place to exist.
Childhood did not unfold.
It condensed.
No space for play.
No time for gradual becoming.
Only adaptation.
The world did not explain itself.
It settled without asking.
What could not be trusted was not questioned.
It was learned.
Very early, something was understood without being named:
What surrounds you is not necessarily real,
but it is always consequential.
The kitchen appeared before language.
A stove.
A pot.
Whatever could be found.
Not as choice.
As necessity.
Food was scarce.
Ingredients uncertain.
Nothing stable enough to repeat.
I learned to work with what was there.
To transform without expectation.
To continue without guarantee.
There was no instruction.
No transmission.
Only observation and attempt.
In that space, something formed.
Not comfort.
Not expression.
The ability to make something out of very little.
The ability to continue without being held.
This came first.
Everything else came later.