post 4.1.1.0 Counseling and Memories

I've signed up for counseling several times for different reasons. Partway into the second round (at UCD, the counseling center, due to difficulty in completing assignments), it dawned on me that I had more memories of my father's childhood than I did of my own.

That was probably not numerically true. But the stories of his childhood were full of abuse and resentment and if I thought of what was holding me back, what made me feel anxious or why I didn't have much experience interacting with other people, it was the memories of the stories of his childhood that seemed most vibrant and significant. Not only did I experience his childhood injuries by proxy, I learned to discount my own childhood as unimportant in comparison, and the memory of his childhood was what motivated him to keep us sequestered from the world.

Other kids got to wander through the neighborhood, meeting up with friends and going from yard to yard.  We had to stay inside the chain link fence that circled our yard.  On the up side, we were the kids who had a dedicated dirt pile to play in, and it did attract a few of the neighbor kids on a regular basis.  We also had Tonka toys to play in the dirt with, even though we didn't have any brothers.

I'll say more about that later.  This post has touched an old pain and I would rather not define myself by it.