Free Thought Childhood
I was a free-range child. I wasn’t a latchkey kid and I had a curfew. I couldn’t watch Dawson’s Creek or the Simpsons. However, I got no guidance on how to deal with my peers. I didn’t get advice on anything. I got a jump-to-extreme response mother and an “I don’t really care to listen” response father. Most of my guidance boiled down to listening to the pastors and youth leaders I was exposed to.
Going to therapy brings up all sorts of fun memories from the past. This week I have thought about things from high school that I wish I hadn’t. I remember how very few people liked me. I remembered how I got the “most opinionated” award at the Jr/Sr prom my senior year. Ironically I HARDLY EVER TALKED TO ANYONE, yet the jerks of the junior class still decided to let me have it. AND their class sponsor teachers APPROVED IT.
Looking back on that as an adult and a teacher, what the hell were the class sponsors thinking? I still remember how the DJ read the award and his reaction to it. I can remember the reaction of my classmates. I remember how my date and I didn’t attend after prom. I just wanted to go home. I remember how I didn’t want to go to school ever again. I remember how my mom let me skip Monday, but made me go back Tuesday. I remember the kindness of my psychology teacher who quietly said to me, “I’m sorry they did that, they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t nice, you didn’t deserve that.” Remembering his words brings tears to my eyes. He’s the only adult in that Christian school with the integrity to call it wrong.
I didn’t realize until I was an adult how much I struggled as a child and how little help I got from my parents. Now understanding them and their issues, I can see that they didn’t know how, but it still hurts deeply. I always felt like an outcast and pretty much was an outcast. Being properly diagnosed as a child with ADHD would have helped. Being possibly diagnosed being on the spectrum and being in therapy would have also helped. So many things would have helped. Life didn’t have to be so hard. I thought that once I moved away from home life would get easier, but it only got easier for a little while.
