I don’t know if my first memory is really a memory or if it’s just a patchwork of things I’ve heard and images I’ve created from remnants of conversations and photos and stories. Most of my childhood memories are faded, like I’m stretching out to reach them as much as I can with my arms and my fingers and my tiptoes but I just can’t quite touch them, like a dream you can’t quite hold on to once you wake up.

I think this is partially because we moved around so much. If you live in the same house your entire childhood and you remember the Christmas you got the red bike, you might not specifically remember the fireplace and the windows overlooking the trees and the snow, but you can fill those things in from other memories of being in that same house on other Christmases. You know where the window is because you saw it every day for your entire life. I don’t know if we ever lived in the same place two Christmases in a row. I don’t have spare memories to fill in to make that one moment complete.

My first memory is more like a still photograph. I am sitting in the passenger seat of car, looking out. I’m looking slightly up, which would make sense as if this memory is true, I couldn’t have been much more than a year old, so would have been in a car seat. I’m guessing here on the car seat, since I can’t imagine any other way my parents could have gotten a baby not to fall off the seat onto the floor. I’m pretty sure they never used car seats once we were old enough to sit up, as I don’t remember ever being in one. All of my early memories of riding in cars are of me standing up, holding on to the headrest. (To be fair, car seats weren’t legally required when I was a kid, and I’m pretty sure seat belts weren’t either.)

In fact, when I was four and my mom had remarried and we were living in a duplex not far from my grandparents’ house, we were on our way to visit them when someone ran a stop light and plowed right into the side of our car. At the time, my sisters and I were standing up in the back seat, looking out the back window. Suddenly spinning across the road and being thrown into the roof was the most terrifying thing that had happened to me in my short life. I remember only brief moments after that: we were at a nearby house, calling my grandparents; I was on the couch in my grandparents’ den being told I COULDN’T GO TO SLEEP because maybe I had a concussion and if I went to sleep I would never wake. Which was possibly the second most terrifying moment of my life.

Third was when it was time to go home and my stepdad expected me to get into the truck. I don’t remember the drive from the accident to my grandparents’ house, although I’m sure there was one. But likely I was still too shook up to focus on what was happening. Hours later though, trying desperately to stay awake in order to stay alive, I was more alert. And I knew the terror that getting into a car could bring. My stepdad thought I was being a whiny spoiled brat. Kids did what their parents said. End of story. No matter how terrified they might be. Threat of (or possibly actual) spanking later, and there I was, sitting in the truck, petrified. Still without so much as a seat belt.

In my first memory though, I’m pretty sure I was in a car seat of some kind. I think I was in an old VW bug, although I’m sure that’s just because I know that my (biological) father drove one. The car was parked in an alley in front of our house (I have a vivid memory of scraggly yard and the chain link fence, although I have no idea if those are real) and I was looking up at the back of an apartment building at the end of the alley. It was a stucco building, stacked with windows — no balconies — and the windows I was looking at were lined with aluminum foil. And that’s what I remember: thinking, why is that stuff covering those windows?

I told my mom about this memory, and she said it was accurate. That there was in fact an apartment building like that where we lived and that people covered their windows with aluminum foil to keep out the heat of the sun.

Things I don’t remember but that I’ve been told: that the house didn’t have any screens, but it was so hot, my parents would keep the windows open anyway and I got so covered in mosquito bites that when the landlord came over one day he was horrified and had screens put in; that my (biological) father used to grow pot in the yard and once his brother (my uncle) borrowed his car (the bug) and got pulled over for drinking but my uncle told the cops that he had to return the car so they drove him back to my parents’ house, subsequently found the pot and arrested my (biological) father; that my mom claims they were also going to arrest her (who knows who’s drugs they were, after all), but that she cried, and they let her stay with me and wasn’t I lucky because just like that I would have had to go live in foster care; that the house had no furniture and only a mattress on the floor because my parents were hippies.

That was actually the second house I lived in. I was born in the first. But by the time I was a year and a half, my parents had split up and my mom (and my not-quite born yet sister) and I had moved in with my grandparents. In the house where my sister was later born.

I think most kids think their childhoods are pretty normal as they’re growing up. We have no frame of reference, so why wouldn’t we think whatever we’re experiencing normal? It takes a while before we start to compare ourselves to the outward glimpses of other kids, and even then, who’s to say they aren’t the odd ones? After all, our parents are the most authoritative figures in our lives, so whatever they’re advocating must be the right way about going about things. And even once we realize our parents are merely human, we still only know what we know.

Even now. I can’t fathom what it would be like to grow up somewhere — the same somewhere — and have the same friends and go to the same school and whatever else growing up in one place might mean. I also don’t know if it’s better or worse than moving all the time, of never knowing how much longer until the next move, of not having that feeling of a home. Am I more adaptive and flexible? Did I learn confidence and how to get along with anyone? Would I fear change and speaking in front of large crowds and meeting new people if I lived in the same house with the same people all my life?

Some things I do know. And some things I continue to learn.

Why does it matter? Why not just say you had a childhood and I had a childhood and we’re all adults now and we make our lives now? We do make our lives now and I don’t see a reason to spend our time in the past. Mostly I find that dwelling on the past doesn’t do anything to move me forward. It just pulls me back into a place I have no desire to be.

But.

Sometimes, I don’t know how I end up in a place or a feeling and then I realize I’m just going through the motions I learned a long time ago. And I don’t have to go through those motions. But I can’t know that until I know where I learned them. Which is a convoluted way of saying that the past can set you free. Or something possibly less pithy.

Also, sometimes people think the stories about my childhood are funny.

I am, of course, a liar. But you knew that already. You’ve read about how I don’t need anything except my independence and how the only true validation comes from within. And yet you’ve also read about how I love the show Scrubs entirely because the theme song reminds me that it’s OK that I can’t do everything on my own.

The sad truth is that I completely mock the horrifying lyrics in that teenage pop song “According to You”, which include the following:

According to you
I’m stupid,
I’m useless,
I can’t do anything right.
According to you
I’m difficult,
hard to please,
forever changing my mind.
I’m a mess in a dress,
can’t show up on time,
even if it would save my life.
According to you.
But according to him
I’m beautiful,
incredible,
he can’t get me out of his head.
According to him
I’m funny,
irresistible,
everything he ever wanted.

Yes, horrifying. I want to take her aside and tell her that she’s beautiful and funny and incredible whether a guy is telling her that she is or not. And that relying on that as a gauge is a sure way to heartbreak and pain and dependence and honestly, a neediness that’s just not attractive to anyone. It’s self-fulfilling. Being insecure about not being pretty or smart or funny or whatever enough is the best way not to appear to be enough of any of those things.

And yet, there are days when I can understand those lyrics completely. When I don’t feel beautiful or funny or anything anyone has ever wanted and no amount of inner confidence and strength can convince me otherwise. When, in fact, I do want outside validation. When being enough on my own just makes me tired.

Everyone wants to hear something nice every once in a while.

Business travel is built around the idea of the solitary. When you check into business hotels, you’re given a single room key and there’s only enough of that awful hotel room coffee for one. You’ll often get a king size bed, but that’s just the hotel’s way of saying that you might be sharing the bed with someone, but it’s not someone they expect will be sticking around for morning coffee.

Leisure travel is not designed in quite the same way. Where does one sense this more strongly than when hoping to order food from a restaurant accustomed to tourists? At an all-inclusive resort in a tropical location.

It begins on the plane. Again, a business traveler is used to certain type of fellow passenger: generally male, generally in an uncomfortable suit, generally furiously typing on a blackberry until long after the “turn off electronic devices” announcement. An amusing way to pass the time on the flight is to listen to those around you introduce themselves in pre-emptive, self-congratulatory ways. They strike up wary conversations, ostensibly to get to know each other, but in reality as first class versions of gladiator games. “I’m going to Salt Lake to close a million dollar deal. I cover the whole Utah region. Everyone needs pens.” “Oh really? Interesting. I have a meeting with the Utah governor to talk about paperless technologies.” “We should exchange business cards. I’ll email you!” The business traveler version of “I’ll call you” after a blind date.

Planes to leisure destinations are much louder, as they are full of people who already know each other, traveling in packs. A woman behind me boarding the plane to Puerto Vallarta asked the flight attendant about getting someone to switch seats so she could sit with her friend. “It’s all couples on this flight”, the flight attendant told her. “You probably won’t find anyone who will switch.”

Per usual, the taxi driver was quizzical. “You came by yourself? No husband? No boyfriend? No friends?” And here’s where I start to wonder if in addition to having no interest in coupling up, I’m fundamentally unable to even if I did want it. Because the idea of spending a few days entirely by myself doing entirely what I want whenever I want (or not) is exactly what I want to be doing.

Here’s another thing about an all-inclusive tropical resort. You’re not even allowed to book for just yourself. When they say, prices per person, double occupancy, what they mean is that you’re paying for two people, including meals and drinks, whether you invited someone along or not. When I called the hotel to arrange transportation and said it would be just me at the airport, they wanted to know when the second taxi needed to go fetch my traveling companion. When I checked in, reception wanted to know when the second person would be arriving. It’s a perfectly logical question, considering I’ve just paid for two sets of towels, two sets of meal bracelets. Who would do that?

Someone who thinks the solitude, the independence, the freedom are worth it.

Which brings me back to my pondering. I just read Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage. Back when I read the author’s first book, Eat, Pray, Love, I so identified with her agony over purposely destroying, with her own hands, what many would consider the epitome of success.

But unlike her, now that I have independence, freedom — all of those things you aren’t allowed to book at an all-inclusive hotel — I don’t know that I could ever go back. Her new book explores the idea that there’s really no such thing as balance. You can’t have the autonomy and independence and privacy and freedom to do absolutely anything you want anytime you want and have the intimacy and reliability and security of a permanent relationship. Her fear is of the institution of marriage, that marriage itself can overtake you. Perhaps, but I don’t think you need to be married for a relationship to erase large swaths of you, due to the very point that you can’t be completely independent and free and etc.

And yes. I know. Of course the other side of it is it really so important to be able to read in bed with the beside lamp if you can’t sleep at 2am, when the tradeoff is everlasting love and comfort and someone to hold your hand? And I guess my answer is that I don’t know.

When people find out I’ve decided, for real, permanently and non-reversibly, not to have kids, they sometimes ask if I might regret it later. If surely one day I’ll wish for the comfort of children and grandchildren and family and again, all the etc. that implies. I don’t know. Clearly I don’t think so.

And so it goes with relationships. Or, at least, that kind of relationship — the type where you pledge your love to one alone and you live in the same house and you tend not to go to all-inclusive resorts without.

I do sometimes feel like I’m the only person actively not looking for a white dress and a white picket fence and a dog and 2.3 children. Well, me and college guys maybe. And not even all of them are in my camp. Apparently, even the word “solitary” is not only not generally considered positive, with thoughts of unencumbered freedom, but indeed skews negative. Consider the only vaguely positive definition I could find: “following or enjoying a life of solitude”. It only allows for the possibility of enjoyment. But that’s overwhelming joyousness compared to the other definitions: having no companions; lonesome or lonely. endured alone. a recluse; a hermit. And it just improves from there: desolate; deserted; silent; still; hence, gloomy; dismal; as, the solitary desert. See also, solitary confinement.

No wonder everyone is scrambling to give up all that freedom for a relationship. Anything sounds better than a solitary life. Even the game of solitaire isn’t always, well, solitary. According to Wikipedia, “it is possible to play the same games competitively (often a head to head race) and cooperatively”.

Last night, I was in a club in Puerto Vallarta, talking to Omar. He was telling me about his ex-wife and how she took all their money and was in and out of rehab and eventually left him for another guy, with whom she’s already had two kids. But you know? I could tell that deep down, he wants her back. He said he knows some people who have been able to make relationships work and have been happy. What did I think?

How did he find me, of all people, to ask that question to?

I didn’t tell him what I think. Although I didn’t paint him a fairy tale world either. I was noncommittal. Which all said, seems about right.