Here goes, a few scenes from my childhood:
I am four? five?, and we have guests over for dinner, fun! These are people that I know, friends of the family, maybe even some family? Don't really remember. Anyway I want to help clear the table, so i take a plate out to the kitchen. Unfortunately I drop it, and it breaks...My mother starts shouting and raging at me, absolutely furious. I am crying and screaming back at her: "I didn't mean to, You can't yell at me, it's not fair, it's not fair, I didn't do it on purpose!" she just keeps raging. The guests who are in the next room must have heard this, but no-one came to my defence. I can still feel my complete despair and hurt and shame and guilt and all the rest of the horrible feelings.
I think that I am seven. My mother is taking classes I think, and my sister is a lot older than me, so comes home much later. I don't know why I'm not in daycare after school, maybe because we just moved? More likely that my mother think I am too old. Anyway, she leaves the key under a rock on the patio every day so I can get in, and don't have to wait outside for a couple of hours. But on this particular day she has managed to put the key too far onder the rock, so that the actual weight of the rock is on it, actually, it is so far under the rock that I can't even see it, and think that maybe she forgot to put it there? The rock is about the size of a man's head, so is much to heavy for me to budge. I can't get in the house, so I have to wait outside. This is not to bad, because it is spring and warm, and I like being outside. But after an hour or so I feel the need to go to the toilet. And not a number one either. I don't think I have time to make it to one of my classmates homes. I contemplate crawling into the bushes and do it, but there will be no paper, so i will still soil my pants, and what if the neighbours see me? (It never occurs to me to go to one of the neighbours and ask to use the toilet, because I am very shy. I end up doing it in my pants. When my mother comes home, of course, she rages at me for not getting the key, I tell her that I couldn't get the key, but she jsut becomes even more angry, maybe she doesn't believe me.She shows no sympaty for me, no empathy for the humiliation, shame and guilt I already feel, but just keeps loading more of the same on to me.
After that I'm allowed to wear the key on a string around my neck.
I am seven or eight. In school they have told us to bring something in to iron, 'cause we are learning to do this. I tell my mother and she gives me one of my shirts and a plastic bag to carry it in, no hanger. We do the ironing in a different building from school, right after that we have to go back to school, so i put my shirt in my plastic bag and go to school. This is in the morning. The shirt lies in the plastic bag all day and gets more and more wrinkled. When I get home mymother asks to see it. I show it to her and she laughs, scorns me, tells me what a horrible job I've done: "It is more wrinkled than it was this morning!"
Many years later my mother tells me that around this time my teachers contacted her. They were worried about me, thought I might be semi-autistic. My mother is laughing when she tells me this, "as if something could be wrong with her daughter"!? Apparently she just told them there was nothing wrong with me and that was that. It never entered her mind to wonder why they would believe such a thing, or to worry about me or even ask me how I was doing.
These are just a few fragments, but it still feels very hard to post them. I feel ashamed that these things happened to me (that I let them happen?), and I feel ashamed for "whining" about them now. It's not so bad, many people had it much worse. But I remember being depressed as early as at five, only I didn't have that word for it, I called it "homesickness", only I felt homesick at home too. I was never afraid of death, in fact I used to think it was strange to be afraid of death (and there was no religion in my family, so I didn't think I would go to heaven), and used to climb in high places above concrete or asphalt. I never fell though, for which I am grateful today.
Pressing submit is going to be difficult, but there are some things that have to be done no matter how scary and painful. Please don't hate me!
