No Shame 8: Childhood

CHILDHOOD

So how do I write about my childhood without a sense of shame or bemoaning my youthful standards of disappointment and embarrassment; without a petrifying nostalgic ache that will prohibit me from understanding what the fuck happened?
I suppose it doesn't have to be autobiographical. I could discuss the generalities of preadolescence, comparing eras and social standings in order to wrap my mind around the plaguing issues in the modern young. I could avoid the pedophile jokes because they're not really funny anymore. I could also just sit here and weep.

I may have over-written the introduction because, hey, I tend to do that and fuck you, but also because I may begin to spiral downwards into incoherent psychoanalysis for the rest of this post. I have so many bitter resentments from childhood that rarely bubble up, largely due to my feeling the need to contain and subdue said resentments in order to make my parents feel better about our relationships. It all goes in the cancer ball. Is that what ages me?

I can't really discuss childhood without addressing adulthood, a concept that I feel is ambiguous if existent. People seem eager to reach this label, and I understand the reasoning behind measuring certain achievements in that manner. You've made it to the next level, so you must be doing something right. There's also a basic need to simply do what's next, to move forward. It's exciting to live differently and progressively. Little answers along the way create the comfort that you have some things figured out, that life is manageable, that getting up and cleaning and working and shitting are necessary routines in order for the balance of existence, the moments of clarity and happiness and peace and harmony and-WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?

I'm sorry, that was running away from me into Plato's cave of cocaine dorm talk or some shit.
Not that it was completely without merit or would have never reached a cohesive point. There was direction there. It was just overwrought.
What I may have gotten to eventually is that I'm not sure where childhood becomes adulthood, because everyone I meet who wants to be a grown up is incredibly childish. Every story I've heard and moral I've learned has taught me that most embodiments of adulthood that I consistently witness are, for lack of a better word, bad. This isn't an endorsement for infinite childhood, though the idea could be well argued, and I'm about as far from the right person to point this sort of thing out as you can possibly get.
I just don't think that the stages are as clearly defined as they once might have been, and perhaps that's a part of what's contributing to or even causing this current overwhelming of arrested development in America (boo-ya!)

I could also be a slow child who's had too much coffee and doesn't understand anything, in which case please do not touch me.