My memories start uncommonly early.

Most people place their earliest memory around the age of three and start having continuous memories by four or five.

My earliest memories are from when I was about two. Possibly even earlier, but those are hazy and disjointed, and I have no way of timing them correctly.

Me being unable to leave the playpen, that my older sister already knows how to get out of.
My little red pillow.
Me and my sister trying our fat tomcat's kibble, to see what it tastes like (crunchy and salty).
Being proud of not falling over a cable that I have previously tripped over.
Me in bed with my mother and father because I cannot sleep. I annoy her in some way, maybe I talk too much, so she turns her head to the other side. I crawl over her, so we're face to face again, and she then buries hers in her pillow and stays like that. I can't figure out how she does it, because when I try, I can't breathe.
The pattern on our kitchen floor, and the smell of the fridge.

There are other memories, but those are fake.

They're the ones your mind constructs from what you imagine, or when you hear an anecdote, and they soon seem so vivid and real, that you take them for your own.

Like the time I found a fat rat our tomcat had decapitated and hugged and petted it, saying "poor mousy!"

I remember that, but I know it's a fake memory because I had no recollection of it before hearing the story.

The first dog we used to own, but had to give away when it bit my sister.
The wind-chimes hanging by the door.
The guinea pigs I accidentally killed, because, sick of having to care for them, my mother had given them to the shelter, but then had brought them back a few days later because my sister and I would not stop crying, and I was so happy to have them back that I hugged them to death.

Those other memories are different.

I remember having them all my life, and those are not things I've ever talked about.

Still, they are hazy, and I know only very roughly from when they are.

The one, that I usually think of as my first distinct and clear memory, comes after that.

It's a single phrase from when I was about two and a half.

I call it my first, because not only can I put a clear time and place to it, but it is one, that has burned itself into my mind, a memory that was present for all my life, that made me wake up crying at three and four, that was there with me when I was five and six and seven, that haunted me at ten, and that I can still recall with the same clarity today.

There are a few gaps, but my memory starts being continuous shortly after that, beginning - funnily enough - with the party for my third birthday.

My soon-to-be stepmother was already there, as was my cousin, who was 8 years older than me and was helping out.

At the time, my father was in the process of renovating a flat in my grandmother's house, where he planned for us to live, and we celebrated there.

We had invited my friends from the neighborhood, who were more of a little kiddy-gang really and my loyal followers.
I was one of the youngest, but also very eloquent for my age, and knew neither shame nor fear.
Plus, we were the only ones around who had a swing-set in their garden that you only got to use if I graciously allowed it, so I had quickly become the leader of a noisy pack of brats.

Under my lead, we would play outside, beg cheap ice-cream off the owner of the local pub, would ring random doorbells and run, or raid the local apothecary, who kept an open basket of little packs of colorfully wrapped grape sugar far too close to the door.

Being allowed to run around quite freely, even at such a young age, was one of the perks of living in a small village, where everyone knew everyone else and any grown up in the vicinity could quite naturally be counted upon to have an eye on us.

By the time I celebrated my third birthday, we had been living at our grandparent's for about half a year, which is very close to forever at that age, so my group of friends was already quite large.

I remember sitting on simple long benches in a bare room, still in the midst of being renovated.
My cousin and soon-to-be stepmother had filled a huge balloon with sweets and confetti and surprised me, by popping it over my head, so it all rained down on me, which I loved.

I remember that day so vividly because it was the last time my mother came to see me.

The whole thing was very anticlimactic for a "last visit" and couldn't have lasted more than five minutes.
I was called away from my friends and went to the door, where my mother was.
She hugged me, wished me a happy birthday and gave me a pack of edible paper for a gift.
We might have talked for a minute or two (I don't remember too clearly) and she was gone.

I neither saw nor heard from her again after that.

Not until I went to see her at the age of sixteen, in an attempt, after years and years of therapy, to finally make peace with my past, find closure, so I could leave that chapter of my life behind me for good.

And maybe even free myself from that very first memory of mine, that still sometimes echoed in my head.

I hadn't succeeded and instead of gaining peace, I lost my name.

These days, the pain is long gone.

And yet, almost a quarter of a century later, I still sometimes hear her voice and just for a tiny fraction of a second I am two years old again.

"Well, then you can fuck off, and do take the children with you when you go."