Dear Gaia:

You wrote yesterday: “I always have so much vivid memories of almost everything ever prior being 4”.

I then asked you to “type away these memories then, prior to 4, starting with as early as you can remember. Type and type until you get tired and submit”.

Today, you typed the following (I will separate what you typed to groups):

1. “I remember .. I was obsessed with drawing, playing on the PC and was obsessed with animals… I was obsessed with reading”- a child younger than 4, even a child younger than 10, does not have the verb to obsess in her vocabulary. She doesn’t spontaneously think: I am drawing too much, or I am playing on the PC too much, or I am reading too much. A child is told these things by a parent and later in school, maybe by a teacher.

Remember I told you that you have to know who your mother is, so that you can know who you are? Well, what I am getting from this collection of quote here, is that your mother told you that you are obsessed and obsessive, that you draw, play and read too much. She clearly suggested to you that you are abnormal, that you abnormally draw, play and read.

I don’t know that you really did draw, play and read too much/ obsessively/ abnormally. I know your mother said so.

2. “I remember that I was a very imaginative and artsy kid”- this is also something that you were told. It may be true and I tend to believe that it was, because children are imaginative by nature. But a child imagines; a child does not say to herself: I am very imaginative! I am artsy! Someone told you so.

3. “I remember.. I was a homebody and I remember my mother being concerned about me loving home more than going out, she thought something was off”- again, your mother sent you the message that there is something abnormal and unusual about you, something that is off.

I don’t know if there was a realistic reason for concern on her part. Maybe there was nothing to be concerned about, for.. a normal mother. You see, it can be that you were very normal and she was abnormal, inaccurately projecting her .. abnormality into a little normal girl.

4. “I remember.. I genuinely had more fun at home than going out… My.. school peers .. at times they wanted me to  play, other times rejected me”- I think that this is the usual experience for children in school- being accepted by some, at times and being rejected at other times.

5. “I remember…was kinda of an intellectual, but sucked at math, I felt stupid.. When I was 6 or 9 years  old, my peers and classmates overwhelmed me with their desire for me to draw stuff to  them”.

– Notice that you are no longer talking about being 4 and younger than 4. Notice how little you remember from 4 and younger (most of which is what you were told, not what you experienced), even though only yesterday you wrote that you have memories of “almost everything ever prior being 4”- what you actually remember is very little and far, far from being almost everything.

You remember being “kinda of an intellectual”- no. This is something you either were told early on or looking back you figured (as an older child, a teenager maybe) that back then you were an intellectual. What is clear is that you liked to draw for a while and you did it well.

6. “I remember.. I have a temper so  often teachers lamented that I was very short fused”- maybe you were short fused because it was difficult to live with a mother who repeatedly sent you the message that you were abnormal, unusual and that something was off about you. You were frustrated and angry as a result, then acted unusually in school which confirmed to your mother (and to yourself) that oh, there really is something off about me!

anita