2 posts tagged “childhood memories”

I have been reading a book, it's someone's memoirs actually. It is about discovering the sexuality of adolescence (I stole that from the back cover). In it she is talking about going through puberty and when some of the girls started getting breasts and some didn't. How devastating it was to her to  be one of the ones who didn't. She talked about the guys always groping at her and trying to get a feel of the girls breasts or even to just snap their  bras. She talks about guys mooing and making suckling sounds at the girls. I about died. I don't know if most people had the same experience, but that is exactly how it was when I was growing up, except that I wasn't one of the ones with no boobs I was one of the ones with them and I hated it.

The thing is, in the book she is very light hearted about the whole thing, the people touching her, the comments. She didn't have any lasting trauma from it or bad memories of it. That is where our paths diverge, maybe it is the difference in our lives pre-puberty, but in mine by the time I had gotten to that point I had already been being molested for years, By that point I was sick to death of guys groping at me. When a guy would grab my boob, I instantly felt sick and dirty, my blood would race through my veins, my skin would crawl  and I would brace myself for what was going to come next. Nothing really ever did. I hated my body more then anything, I wished daily that I was a boy and that I could blend into the wall and not be noticed.I wondered what it was about me that people just always felt the need to be  touching me.  I hated bra's. I hated everything having to do with being female. When my period started I wished I could just die. I felt like my whole body was soiled and everyone could see and no matter how much I tried to scrub myself clean people could tell there was something wrong with me. That was back in the days when I still had conversations with god. I talked to him everyday. I wanted to know why he was torturing me. I thought if I wanted it hard enough I could make it all go away. I asked and pleaded and tried to make deals with him. If I could just go to sleep and never wake up I would do "fill in the blank thing" for him.

To make things even more confusing for me. I had a huge craving for all things sex. I was over-sexualized, but at the same time that I craved it I felt dirty and wrong about anything that had to do with sex. I knew there was something wrong with me. I knew when I would talk to my friends and they would be whispering in their hushed voices things about sex. They were guessing what sex was and what it would feel like. They would talk about losing their virginity. I knew things though. Things I wouldn't admit to them. I knew exactly what sex was and I wasn't a virgin. I didn't have that "special" first time. I didn't even remember my first time. I thought they would be able to tell  if I got into their conversations, I always sat quietly during them afraid to reveal to much information, something that might give me away. I would sit there with a stomach ache the whole time the conversation was about sex. Even though they talked about it, I knew they didn't think about it the way that I did. I thought about it all the time, I fantasized about it during the day and I dreamed about it at night.  I knew that I thought about things that they could never understand. I knew I was alone with my own thoughts and my own warped mind. I knew all that and that was before I ever even got into high school.

I wish I could write a book like hers. Light hearted remembrances of innocent times past when sex was just a curiosity in the air... Something to be discovered... A mystery to be solved...

My children are nothing like I was when I was younger...or like I am now for that matter. A typical Christmas for my brothers and I  was...

On Christmas eve we would all sleep on the floor in the basement. We weren't allowed to wake each other up, but we were allowed to get our stockings as soon as we woke up. One of us (usually me ) woke up at around 2 or 3 AM. We would accidentally on purpose  trip over the still sleeping people so that if it came down to it we wouldn't be lying if we were asked whether we woke up the others or not, because after all it was an accident that we woke them up. So anyway, early morning we would run up and get our stockings and open all the presents in them. Then we would fall back asleep. We would sleep for a couple hours and by 5 AM we were up again and ready to open presents. We were not allowed to touch the presents until we opened them, because our parents didn't want us figuring out what was in them, and I actually do not ever remember us breaking the rule and touching them. At 5 AM we would go upstairs and wake up my mom and dad. Then we would go sit and wait FOREVER :-) for them to come down. We couldn't open any until my dad had his coffee in hand. Finally we could open them all and it took probably less then a half hour. I was the worst one,I had no patience and everything about Christmas excited me. I am still like that. I love Christmas morning.

Now for my kids...

They all go to sleep in their own beds. At some point in the morning I can't stand it any longer and I have to fight every urge to wake them up to open presents and get their stockings. I have been pacing the living room since 5 AM waiting for them to get up. FINALLY they get up. One at a time they  slowly come out. They don't wake each other up. I have to wait agonizingly for each to get up. They don't run to their stockings right away or spend more then a minute gazing at the presents under the tree trying to figure out what they are. They wander around the house for a while waking up. All the while the suspense is killing me. I want to run after them with their stockings in hand screaming open them, for the love of god open them. Then ever so slowly they wander over to their stockings and open them. Then after they have looked at their stockings for what seems like hours, they are ready to open presents. From there it goes quickly. My parents always said that when I had kids I would be paid back for waking them up early every  Christmas. I wish...seriously where are these kids that are so impatient and excited because I could handle the early morning wake up. It is the slow leisurely wake up that kills me. So in a way I was paid back for it, it just happened to be by them doing the opposite thing than what I did to my parents.