Valuable Realizations
When i was really sick a couple of days ago, I got a little lonely of being all alone wallowing in viral misery and decided to hop over to my friend's place to do some online surfing (and a lot of facebook time).
My friend arrived from work a couple of hours later and we started talking about all sorts of things.
The topic had drifted to talking about what it was like being sick when we were kids.
She said that when she gets sick, she looks for her mom. Her memories of being sick when she was a kid always involved a fussing mom.
I paused and recollected my childhood. My memories of me being sick were locking myself up in a room so my mom couldn't fuss over me.
Which isn't normal. I realized. I mused out loud if she knew other kids who would do the same. She said all her friends remember the "mommy moments" when they were sick.
I accepted that memory, quite shocked. I haven't really looked at it that way before, and now that it has surfaced, I got a little worried.
Eventually I realized why I did that. I didn't allow myself to bother my mom because of some childhood belief that anything that burdened my mom would question my existence again. I've been so guilty of just existing as their kid that my self worth was shot at that time. I didn't care whether I lived or died, being uselessly sick was as good as accepting death at that point.
Weird huh. On and on I thought about what that meant and a pattern emerged of how I viewed myself. Then the floodgates opened and I began to remember what it felt like when I was a kid. What I thought about myself. The pressure. The pain I kept that made me fantasize about doing anything to escape it.
My friend arrived from work a couple of hours later and we started talking about all sorts of things.
The topic had drifted to talking about what it was like being sick when we were kids.
She said that when she gets sick, she looks for her mom. Her memories of being sick when she was a kid always involved a fussing mom.
I paused and recollected my childhood. My memories of me being sick were locking myself up in a room so my mom couldn't fuss over me.
Which isn't normal. I realized. I mused out loud if she knew other kids who would do the same. She said all her friends remember the "mommy moments" when they were sick.
I accepted that memory, quite shocked. I haven't really looked at it that way before, and now that it has surfaced, I got a little worried.
Eventually I realized why I did that. I didn't allow myself to bother my mom because of some childhood belief that anything that burdened my mom would question my existence again. I've been so guilty of just existing as their kid that my self worth was shot at that time. I didn't care whether I lived or died, being uselessly sick was as good as accepting death at that point.
Weird huh. On and on I thought about what that meant and a pattern emerged of how I viewed myself. Then the floodgates opened and I began to remember what it felt like when I was a kid. What I thought about myself. The pressure. The pain I kept that made me fantasize about doing anything to escape it.