Sunny Ghost
New member
- Joined
- May 28, 2010
- Messages
- 2,396
I'm curious.
[MENTION=14363]Standuble[/MENTION] Nothing in particular. Just what qualities did you see at being 4-like when you were a child.
Oh hi, me.- At my very youngest, I was quite extroverted and outgoing. My mother would marvel at my people skills and exuberance. I was also weirdly easy to content, capable of obscene amounts of focus (like when I was 3, I apparently sat still for two hours straight trying to read a book), and very self-entertaining.
Yeah! Still breaking out here, and it's inspiring to see other people return to themselves from it.- In the third grade I became super-withdrawn due to bullying that I was taught to "ignore". I ignored it by withdrawing, and that, unfortunately, became something it took the next two decades to break out of. I think I'm back to normal now, though.
*meets child self at home* *smacks for being too bratty*- I was still a brat at home, though. A horrible nasty willful spoiled brat. If I met my childhood self, I'd smack me.
Oh yeah, these.- Also, I was the way most 4s were--creative, "gifted" (it is not a gift, lol), idiosyncratic, imaginative, "different and special", created a lot of imaginary friends and liked arts and crafts. I also liked science. Lots and lots. I was known as "the scientist" by my family. And I liked animals.
Oh hi, me.
Yeah! Still breaking out here, and it's inspiring to see other people return to themselves from it.
*meets child self at home* *smacks for being too bratty*
*meets child self at school* *smacks for being too fragile (somaticization galore) and oversensitive*
Why I could not handle time travel, and pretty much the thread for me. I have anger issues toward myself as a kid that I'm working on, with help. The problem is pinning my past self, who was too young to step outside of it the way I can now, up as representative of what a woman shouldn't be and what could pop back out if I cut myself any slack in the present.
Not that I wasn't as much of a perfectionist back then, too. In fact, my exterior wispiness may just have been because I wore myself down to a raw place internally by being my own tyrant. Introjected a lot of expectations from the environments I was in and cranked them up to unreasonable benchmarks, leaving myself in a constant state of striving that does not do a body good. Artist who never leaves their study. "I might not be an emotionally or physically strong girl, but I can produce things that are beautiful and excel. Every time. Or else." You can't tell me to GTFO because I can't handle life, because then you'd lose these with me. Such becomes a new norm after a while, and putting in the same hours as everyone else accordingly begins to look like failure in comparison and just isn't an option.
Oh yeah, these.