Childhood

[merriehaskell]

I had one of those dreams again, the kind where you wake up exhausted and tired, red-faced and crying. I think I freaked my husband out when he came in and saw me. I know I freaked myself out in the course of my dream. I had the full gamut of sleep paralysis, and the fear that I was going to wake up in another time (this time, 1984), and at one

Comments

[kelly_swails]

This is deep. Serious navel-gazing here. Thanks so much for sharing.

Lack of control over your own existence. Yeah, that's a big reason childhood sucks.

Trying to have emotions like a human and not a Vulcan. Yep. That's why adulthood sometimes sucks.

[redmomoko]

It seems to me that the childhood feeling of having to save the world is the result of the adults in our lives not saving us from things. Parents are supposed to step up and create a feeling of safety and to swoop in and "save" us when life is too big and scary. In my own case, if something wasn't alarming to my parents as adults their attitude to my childhood alarm was "stop being silly, that's not scary"- totally denying the reality I was experiencing and eventually making me doubt my own perfectly reasonable reactions to events. Parents need to understand that the reality of children is not the same as theirs and that they are supposed to "come down" and respond appropriately from the CHILD's worldview. Telling children to suck it up and be adults is like kicking your dog for shedding.