afraid to grow up?

[Guest guest]

I guess there is a lot going on in my mind because I'm posting a lot.

Hopefully I will get through this storm of thoughts and emotions soon.

Thanks for the help.

Does anyone remember being afraid of growing up? I can remember being

terrified of growing old enough to go to Junior High. I remember thinking,

when I was about 9, how many years away jr high school was and I was just

terrified of it. I don't know why. I do remember my mom telling me I would

have to shower with girls and that bigger kids would stuff me in lockers. My

brother enjoyed joining in on this one and harrassing me about it. That

doesn't seem anywhere near bad enough to worry about it for 3 years ahead of

time, especially for a 9 year old child to worry about 3 years before it

would even happen. It was like I would plunge into the depths of hell or

maybe disapear - at least in my mother's eyes I actually did disapear.

I remember the night before I started 4th grade, laying in a bed in the

basement (no idea why I wasn't in my own bed) crying and crying. I was

thinking that if I was starting 4th grade, the next year was 5th and then

6th and then the terrible year - 7th grade. I was crying so hard my dad

actually came and checked on me and asked me, angrily, what's wrong. I said

nothing and he believed it, or wanted to believe it at least.

At the time it never occured to me that other little kids werent terrified

for the school year to start because they were scared - not of school - but

because it meant they were getting older and closer to junior high.

When I did finally get to 7th grade, my b*tch of a mother pretty well

terrorized me. She finally graduated from college that year (after 9 years

working on her bachelor's) and accepted a job teaching 7th grade English.

She was completly unavailable to me that year. When I saw her, all she did

was talk about how much she " hated 7th graders " and " 7th grade girls. " If I

asked her about it, " but mom, I'm in 7th grade " she would say " well, at

least you aren't one of the bad ones. " I heard her crying a lot and crying

to my dad in private all the time. Years later he told me that was a

terrible year. Also, my brother had a horrible 7th grade year, 2 years

earlier, although I didn't know it at the time. My mother's whole late-age

unwanted pregnacy and the death of the fetus happened that year. My dad

later told me that my brother had a horrible time that year.

I also remember my dad going to my parent teacher conferences that year and

my mom had absolutely nothing to do with my school work, or me at all. At my

first midterm review he came home and asked me why I was getting a D in

English. Turns out, I had done the assignments, I was just too afraid to

hand them in to the teacher so he worked with me on that and I was able to

start turning them in. I don't know what kind of student I was in elementary

school, but this is strange to me because I was an honors student in jr.

high, high school and college. My strongest subjects were language, arts and

science. . .

Now I believe she orchestrated the whole teaching job to terrorize me.

There's no reason her first job had to be teaching kids my age, or that she

would have to treat me like shit.

Now that I'm an adult I don't really believe in unplanned pregnacies either.

I know they happen, but it seems unlikely to happen if you full on did not

want it to. I wonder if she did that to hurt us - or because of her own

fears of abandonment.

Actually, I think the whole issue was about abandonment. For some reason she

thought puberty=abandonment. Even after all these years it is a painful

memory.