Ever Since in A Childhood Lost

I was young- how young I don’t know- I’ve had a melancholy overcome me in the autumn. I feel it now, if only in a far less intense, shadowy way.
I was just thinking about the depths of depression that my young mind was wallowing in. Listening to parenting and lifestyle or values based podcasts, for the purpose of course of educating myself and immersing my mind and psychology into normalizing ideals that are based on real knowledge foundations, it cannot be helped that I think of what happened to me.
Dr Laura says, if you put your kids in daycare, you’re a bad mom. If you put your kids in daycare, you’re not even a mother. Mothering is a verb. Can it be said that you are a checkout clerk, if you do not show up for your job? Can it be said that you are a mother, if you do not mother?
Whatever it is about this time of year, it is extremely poignant, for me. I feel it in my bones, and sinew and in my emotional life. I ask myself, what happened? And I feel a sense of shame. Sadness. Loss. Depression. My mother was very angry. I remember distinctly a time in my young adulthood, just out of grade school, that I attended college at a local school, and worked full time at night. I slept very little. I didn’t socialize at all- there simply was not time. I did have my horse, that I would visit every chance I got. The horse that saved my life, I think.
Still, I remember during this period of working and school full-time, that I spoke so rarely that I went a full month and a half without uttering a single word. Not one word. Not to a soul. During that time, I had been yelled at, cussed out and called every despicable adjective by my mother.
She hated me.
It was because I was a bad person.
“Do you think we like you?” she asked me slowly at the door to my room. I had been in my room, isolating myself from the general family areas. “M- you’re acting like a selfish brat. It’s not all about you! We all have to work around here, and stay- Don’t look at me like that!” she suddenly sneered, as if offended. “Don’t give me that face.”
What face? I always wondered.

“I’ll always be your mother. No matter how you want to deny me.” J said to me most recently. I had told her that she was not a mother, to me. She just gave birth, and then handed me over to other people. I wasn’t loved. I wasn’t cared for. I wasn’t even allowed to express sadness over not being loved. If I did I was bad. Selfish. Manipulative. A brat. And I was sent to my room until I became ‘more reasonable’. We’re talking 0 to 3 or 4.
But what is it about autumn? What in particular about the end of August, and October? School? What happened to me?
It is still a sort of abuse, to be an adult and have no one to ask about my childhood, because no one even knows. There are a lot of adult children in this situation, I wager. The Daycare Generation. There was not a single person who witnessed more than a few of my firsts. Not a single person that knew for sure that they were witnessing one of my firsts. Because I could have done that at home, before, or at daycare before, or while this or that babysitter was watching me. No one knew anything about me, for sure. No one loved me. No one cared for me. And the proof of that is there is no one to ask, now. Now that I have questions about what I’m feeling, wondering what happened that might possibly explain or contribute to my experiences or challenges, there isn’t a single person who knew me that I can ask.

Last updated October 03, 2023