April 22, 2025 By Alex Carter

I don’t know what it means, but there’s something inside me that can’t seem to understand it all. As a kid, I did things I can’t even remember, but my grandmother told me about them, and they haunt me every time I think back. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why I did these things.

Apparently, when I was really little, around four or five, I did something truly horrifying—I killed my grandfather’s duck. I stomped it into the ground. I never recall this happening. There’s no memory, no feeling tied to it. But my grandmother says she found me standing there, and the poor animal was dead. It’s something that makes no sense to me.

Then, there was the time I was found with a kitten—strangled—in a garage. I didn’t even know what to do with that. It doesn’t make sense in my mind, but my grandmother says I was found with it, and I remember her telling me that she couldn’t understand why I would do such a thing. And neither can I.

I wasn’t a violent kid in any way that I can remember now, but hearing these things again as an adult makes me question myself. There’s a part of me that feels like I need answers, but there’s no way to understand why I would do such things at such a young age.

It’s not just these things either. There’s another memory—burning a tablecloth while me and my brother were playing under it. I don’t remember the reasoning, the thought process behind it. I just know it happened.

When I told someone about all this—about the things I supposedly did as a child—they said they thought I might be psychotic. I don’t know if I’m psychotic, or if that’s just a misunderstanding of my past. I don’t feel like a violent person now, but I’m scared. I’m scared of these things from my childhood, things I have no memory of but that everyone else seems to recall.

It’s been years since those events. I’m older now, and I don’t feel violent. But it still lingers. I think I’ve always had problems with my emotions. I’ve always felt a little detached, like there was some part of me I didn’t fully understand. Maybe this is just another puzzle piece I’ll never be able to fit together.

I just want to know what it all means, but maybe that’s something I’ll never have the answers to. Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe it wasn’t.