Too late to go back now
May. 28th, 2004 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brightrosefoxI finally broke through one of my supressed childhood memories. I am, understandably, a little saddened, disturbed, angry, and regretful.
In my dream last night, I was seven years old and on the concrete playground behind my public Brooklyn elementary school. I was being cornered by three classmates, two girls and a boy, although I can't remember their names. They were calling me fat, ugly, crippled, worthless. And I realized something else that had been deeply, deeply repressed: I was a chubby child. When I was seven, I was around twenty pounds overweight. And I got teased badly, especially because I also limped and because I read books more than the other kids.
This was a year after the deaths of my dog and my maternal grandmother. Things were piling up on me stress-wise. My parents sent me to a psychologist when I was ten, but the funny thing is, I don't think I ever told anyone that I was being teased so badly. The memories popped up in dreams and nightmares and flashbacks for years; I remember staring in the mirror and hating the baby fat on my cheeks. I know I lost all the weight quickly because of Mom's cooking, but the memories stayed. Depressing, isn't it? I know people have had much worse experiences than mine, but to a seven-year-old girl, there's not much outside the world she knows.
At least I finally understand that my eating disorders came from a real childhood of temporary chubbiness, and not an imagined fear of it...
It would certainly explain some of my shyness, fear of confrontation, etc. Fear of being picked on and ridiculed and losing friends. Yow. Kids on the playground really can be so cruel. Oy. I feel a little better now, knowing this. The memories are slightly less foggy. It's just incredibly disturbing and depressing how deeply an entire childhood can get buried to avoid thinking about a few isolated events. There are tons of people worse off than I was, and they broke through! I'm not complaining about anything, mind you, just frustrated that I supressed those memories so much.
Sigh.
I still feel better, though.
In my dream last night, I was seven years old and on the concrete playground behind my public Brooklyn elementary school. I was being cornered by three classmates, two girls and a boy, although I can't remember their names. They were calling me fat, ugly, crippled, worthless. And I realized something else that had been deeply, deeply repressed: I was a chubby child. When I was seven, I was around twenty pounds overweight. And I got teased badly, especially because I also limped and because I read books more than the other kids.
This was a year after the deaths of my dog and my maternal grandmother. Things were piling up on me stress-wise. My parents sent me to a psychologist when I was ten, but the funny thing is, I don't think I ever told anyone that I was being teased so badly. The memories popped up in dreams and nightmares and flashbacks for years; I remember staring in the mirror and hating the baby fat on my cheeks. I know I lost all the weight quickly because of Mom's cooking, but the memories stayed. Depressing, isn't it? I know people have had much worse experiences than mine, but to a seven-year-old girl, there's not much outside the world she knows.
At least I finally understand that my eating disorders came from a real childhood of temporary chubbiness, and not an imagined fear of it...
It would certainly explain some of my shyness, fear of confrontation, etc. Fear of being picked on and ridiculed and losing friends. Yow. Kids on the playground really can be so cruel. Oy. I feel a little better now, knowing this. The memories are slightly less foggy. It's just incredibly disturbing and depressing how deeply an entire childhood can get buried to avoid thinking about a few isolated events. There are tons of people worse off than I was, and they broke through! I'm not complaining about anything, mind you, just frustrated that I supressed those memories so much.
Sigh.
I still feel better, though.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-28 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-28 05:50 pm (UTC)anyway call me ok? my cell died, i lost all my #s--i have something to tell you (actually it's watson's news) and there's a question i wanted to ask.
loveoo!