#childhood

The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. It resists finishing, and partly this is because words are not enough; my early world was synaesthesic, and I am haunted by the ghosts of my own sense impressions, which re-emerge when I try to write, and shiver between the lines. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#consciousness #ghosts #life #past #life

Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well under way. I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. I woke at intervals until, by that September when Father went down the river, the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not. I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#childhood #consciousness #self #life

A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers. One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time. One is mortal. They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless. They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers. They each die fighting the blind god. ↗

— Matthew Stover

#nature

Childhood trauma does not come in one single package. ↗

— Dr. Asa Don Brown

#psychologist #psychology #ptsd #recovery #research

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by. ↗

— Rachel Reiland

#bpd #childhood-trauma #inspirational #love #mental-illness

I had a really normal childhood except I acted. It was like, my brother played soccer, and I was on television sometimes. ↗

— Shiri Appleby

#brother #childhood #except #had #i

I had the standard movie geek childhood, because for as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was make movies. ↗

— Paul Thomas Anderson

#childhood #geek #had #i #i can

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity. ↗

— Roberto Benigni

#am #because #childhood #farmer #father

I didn't have a good childhood because I never could get along with other kids. I was the child that sat in the corner eating lunch by herself. ↗

— Jolene Blalock

#because #child #childhood #corner #could

I feel so fortunate, so honored, to have played this game that I love for so long, with so many great players, and in front of so many wonderful fans. I fulfilled a childhood dream the first time I stepped on an NFL field, and the league did not let me down one time. ↗

— Drew Bledsoe

#childhood dream #did #down #dream #fans