Gash from the Past

Each time I see a little child crying or throwing a tantrum, I often wonder what he/she turns out into after 10 years or so.When a mother humiliates her child in public physically or verbally, it gives me a sense of foreboding of what a parent this child will become.

I grew up fast. I was still a kindergarten but I know a boy can fall in love with a girl. I understand that a girl has to maintain a sense of propriety and a boy should not cross such boundary. My high school friends (and I have only a few) would often ask me what college is about when I haven't been there myself, just like them. I always have this air of maturity beyond my age, accompanied by a sense of weirdness and aloofness.

Oftentimes, I found myself outside looking in, that I decided to venture into a journey of self-instrospection. In this journey, I came across a lot of books and one of these is written by a clinical psychologist Oliver James entitled They F*** You Up How to Survive Family Life. It detailed, complete with examples, how a damaged childhood can affect the behavior and perspective of an adult. The younger the child endured an abuse, the more difficult a child can recover from such that he/she tends to repress the emotional pains. However, like an overflowing dam, the repressed emotions have to surge out in the form of anger, insecurities, skewed perspectives, misplaced values and such.

Though fictional, let me cite one of my favorite TV series Dexter as an example. Dexter Morgan is a Miami Police blood spatter pattern analyst. Unfortunately, he is also a serial killer and his need to kill is referred as his dark passenger. This need can be traced back when he was 3 years and found in a pool of his mother's blood, after watching his mother's violent murder.

It may be fictional but fiction has factual basis.

Fresh pains can be one of the outlets of these repressed emotions. It is like a new open wound over old scars and there you can see a tiny child peeking from the past, in the hope of being seen, comforted in her grief and reassured that there is a place for her in your present and future.