The Child in Me

Andrea posted a meme listing five things you miss from your childhood. That got me thinking about my childhood. I never wanted to be a kid and I really mean never. Some of my earliest memories before school, before moving to Barnettville, are of thinking about the things I would do when I was grown up. Before I knew anything about life really, at the age of three and four, I remember wishing I could be an adult. And I don't mean I remember one day when I wished this, I mean this was my thing -- I wished it ALL THE TIME.

All of the things I wanted to do weren't things kids did. None of my interests ever seemed to be on par with my age. For as long as I can remember my inner dialogue was made up of thoughts like, "When I grow up, I'll show them." "When I'm an adult I won't have to listen to them anymore." "I wish I were an adult so I could go to [insert Paris, London, Greece, Italy, Australia, Toronto, NYC, Hawaii, on a cruise, Fantasy Island . . . or any place I might have just seen on tv or read about in book]" "Nobody's going to stop me, when I grow up I'm going to be a movie star."

You get the idea. I never really took to childhood. It didn't suit me. I felt smothered, confined, restricted, even jailed. Once I had a boyfriend who never got over being 10 years old, literally. Ask him the best time of his life and he would answer when he was 10 years old running, playing, open to everything, untarnished. He was popular and had many friends. Other kids looked up to him and respected him. It was a very successful time period in his life. He missed it terribly, would have transported himself back there in a time machine and started all over again if he could have. I didn't understand that at all. To me that was the most absurd thing I had ever heard, to be your best most successful self at the age of 10 . . . crazy!

And you have to understand that my childhood wasn't particularly bad . . . it was actually probably quite good, certainly much better than a lot of other peoples. I just never embraced it at all. I didn't want it. I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny, free to try everything and see just how far I could go. I wanted to be challenged, everything was just too easy, and the older I got the more I wished to turn 18 and be an adult. Because for me that was when the show was really going to start, that's when life would begin.

So five things that I miss from my childhood . . . I can't think of a single one. Maybe it's because I was never really in it, it wasn't real, it didn't matter, it was the future that was important and I always had an eye pointed toward that prize. Always waiting for the real stuff. My sister sometimes will say that something reminded her of something when she was a kid and she'll go all nostalgic. I can get nostalgic over stuff that happened in Toronto (in early adulthood) but nothing before then. I mean I have memories, I had pets and friends and adventures and things, but none of it tugs on my nostalgic heartstrings.

A few years ago someone asked me if I ever thought of my high school sweetheart and wondered what my life would have been like if I stuck with him and got married. And to me the idea is just insane, to even ask such a question of me is nuts. Because to me that whole thing doesn't even constitute a relationship, just kids having fun, thrown together by raging hormones . . . it certainly didn't count. Yet some of my high school friends married their sweethearts and they seem to be doing fine. My sister married hers and I know for sure that they are doing great. I mean it must've been real for them, it obviously counted.

So this leads me to wonder what happened? How is it that my sister and I grew up in the same house with me seeking only to escape childhood and with her embracing it so fully? Does a six-year age difference explain it? Or is there more to it?

Mood: headachy
Drinking: coffee
Listening To: some furniture salesman chatting up my landlord outside
Hair: getting washed today! Yay! . . . could some dye and a cut be on the horizon? . . . stay tuned