Posted by:
catnip
(
)
Date: September 06, 2017 01:13AM
I figured out fairly early in life that it was better to just charge ahead and do something rather than ask and be told "no." And then, if possible, hide the evidence.
Doing something that you really WANTED to do - AND getting away with it - wow, those were peak experiences. And I wasn't really a bad kid, though I was often told that I was bad. It was mostly stuff like refusing to eat certain things, talking back, or get this - getting hurt while playing. I often got punished for ordinary scrapes, scratches, or splinters. My mother rationalized that I must have been doing something stupid, or I would not have been hurt. I learned to hide injuries.
When I was in my mid-30s, I told my doctor about neck pain. After I got x-rays, my doctor asked me why I hadn't told him that my neck had hairline fractures in two places. I didn't tell him because I literally didn't know. I knew that I had been hurt (I remember both injuries) but I was terrified that my mother would punish me for having been stupid.
Decades later, I told my mother about some of these injuries. She told me that I was right - she WOULD have punished me.