Dear Izzy,
My hair is very much like yours! lol - I have done the "Cousin It" look often, on blustery days. Ponytails are my friend. It's thick and every third one wants to coil like a spring... can't stand the feel of it on my face and at 110 degree heat index lately, the cue-ball look has some appeal

In lieu of that, I tie on a babushka, behind ears, and do my housfrau imitation.
Iz,I went back a couple posts because I've been thinking back to "then", too... and trying to remember when it began... that I know I wasn't feeling...
I was just saying things that I thought... fit.
It's very disorienting, because I can't remember much of the real early feelings except fear and all that shyness. I know that there was an unspoken rule not to show emotions and then there was a very unstable aunt who showed enough emotions for all of us and she frightened me... too too touchy-feely. I felt like an alien... and in the home, just all that silence.
Cold-shoulder-anger and contempt all around my mother like a force-field and then Dad's alcohol induced joviality.
The friends I had enjoyed quiet passtimes... but any feelings were long locked away, I guess the "saying what seemed to fit" started when I made shyness enemy #1 and slept with my first man... and then married him.
Nutty thing... just to get it over with.
By the way, you could learn the piano now, even on a keyboard. You read music?
Interesting combo of topics here.
No diagrams in my head, Izzy... much difficulty with the spatial. Much.
But I remember what people say and what I write down. Words... they stick. Not images. If asked to give a physical description of someone, I'd be struck dumb. Don't know whether that's an innate deficiency or a shyness shut-down. Survival meant holding it all in and not looking too closely...
I had a 14-yo Florence, too... her name was Martha. My very successful and pompous old brother said once, "you sure know how to pick friends:P"
She was a reject, but I loved her.
There was nothing at home and nothing at school except to do well and not need anything.
Nothing to cry about there... just had to buckle down and grow up... or act like it anyhow. What happens to all the other feelings besides fear when a person is so shy? After awhile, the biggest fear became... fear of the shyness.
I wouldn't dare wet the bed, Izzy. My 2nd daughter did, till she was 9 and we got away from her dad. I cried alot then.
Would you have been shy in any environment back then or did the things at home cause it? I wonder.
Time for a ponytail

Love,
Hope