Finley Gray

A Hypothesized Barn Owl

My early childhood is blurry, specifically memories with family. The blurriness focuses around the age of seven- which how incredibly convenient, considering the most impressionable years of a child’s life are their first seven years. My foundation was beautifully damned from the beginning. Beautiful, because if it was not damned, I never would have known resilience. When trying to access and reflect upon these aged memories, I’m met with flashes of emotionally charged situations a seven-year-old child has no business being a part of. Most of those emotions fueled of anger and spite, stemming from personal unsatisfaction. My parents were unhappily married with troubled backgrounds themselves, so they did the only thing they knew how to when being faced with unprocessed emotions. They would take out their frustration on whoever or whatever was around them, or they would run from their demons- and their children. I can attest to the saying “you are the natural byproduct of your environment.” As a result, I become an anxiety-induced, socially awkward kid and later teen. However, opposed to the voluntary element implied in that saying, there is not much a child can do to change their surroundings. Despite the limited freedom a seven (or so) year old has, I was lucky enough to discover an escape of sorts. The tiny blue barn offset to the right of our cookie-cutter farmhouse.