We don’t give much thought to how our childhood can have an effect on us. It is in childhood that the foundations for how we make decisions and interact with things start. Our first lessons come from our parents and then, as we start to get older, we navigate the world using our own senses to make choices. Many times they are not the best, but we need those lessons in order to grow and find better ways of doing things.
As I sit in my study, in our house in Mentor, Ohio, at this time of year, I find myself looking back at my life and taking stock in where I am in relation to where I started. So many ways Mentor, Ohio reminds me of the small town I grew up in, while, at the same time, seeming so alien and distant from it. It is times like that, while sitting here at my computer with my first cup of coffee of the day, that those memories come flooding back to me. They come in like a parade, marching to a myriad of beats creating a cacophony of sounds that, together, seem a noise that would wake the very dead, while singularly their hum has peaks and valleys that mark the most impactful parts of the experience.
join me as I share with you, Reflections on My Childhood: Lessons Learned and Unforgettable Memories.
- Living on High Alert: Navigating a Childhood with Severe Allergies and the Constant Threat of Anaphylaxis
- Early Exploration of Identity: Childhood Shame and the Impact of Bullying
- Healing From a Father’s Disappointment: Understanding His Past & Reclaiming Your Path
- From Trauma to Triumph: Embracing Self-Healing and Finding Your Delicious Life (and Beyond!)
Living on High Alert: Navigating a Childhood with Severe Allergies and the Constant Threat of Anaphylaxis
I knew from a very young age that I was different from most other children. My mother used to tell me the stories of how I was born blue and needed to spend time in an incubator after I was born. My mother would find out after that that I probably had asthma. This led to me undergoing allergy tests before I started school. These tests involved needles being stuck in my back, arms, and legs to test for every possible allergen. The results showed that I was allergic to pollen, dust, some molds, animal dander, and others that would cause fits of asthma.
This testing also showed that I had severe allergies to bee stings, especially those of wasps and hornets. These stings had the potential to kill me, if not treated in time. There were two types of bees that caused the strongest reactions. They were wasps and hornets, or as I like to call them – devil bees. A wasp and a hornet would come after you for no other reason than you walked somewhere close to a place they wanted to build a nest. One sting would send me into anaphylaxis in moments. The doctors were so afraid of me being somewhere that would prevent me from getting medical care quick enough, that I was forced to carry around a bee sting kit. At the time, it was a small plastic box that carried a hypodermic needle, a rubber band, and a bottle of epinephrine. I even went through training on how to give myself an injection, should I be out somewhere and need it.
There were two times that I distinctly remember the doctor telling my mother that I may not make it. One specifically happened in the pediatrician office. I had been stung by at least one hornet, that I remember, and I had gotten really nervous over it. As my heart rate spiked, the venom surged through my system. By the time I got to the doctor’s office, my vision was becoming tunneled, my breathing was short and raspy, and my blood pressure was almost non-existent. I was moved to a room and covered with three blankets, keep in mind that outside was the middle of summer and a hot one. The doctors were worried about my blood pressure and was preparing my mother for the worst case scenario. They had given me several shots of epinephrine. A nurse sat with me and my mother for the longest time. Slowly, my body started to recover and the doctor came rushing back in. I just remember him staring me in the eyes with his little light and telling me he was sure I was a goner.
From that point on, I learned to avoid bees, where I could. I also learned breathing techniques to help slow down my pulse and nerves when I get stung so that I have more time to get to a hospital to be treated.
Early Exploration of Identity: Childhood Shame and the Impact of Bullying
My differences didn’t end there. I don’t remember how it all started but I do know that I became fascinated with boys at a young age. I first started experimenting with other boys just before I started kindergarten. These early fumblings happened with a cousin that stayed with our grandmother. Part of me feels that it started like most things from our childhood, bred out of curiosity. I vaguely remember one summer at my grandmothers. She didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was almost in high school. Behind her house, was the outhouse. We would trek out of the house, around it following a path that led right to it. This summer day in particular, my cousin and I were there. One thing led to another and we started comparing ourselves. This led to innocent curiosity and touching. This went on for a while, though, in hindsight I can’t recall how long exactly. We would sneak off for this “game” as often as we could.
One early winter morning, school had been canceled, I seem to recall. My cousin and I decided to sneak off to the outhouse to waste some time. As we slowly started undressing and into our game, the door was thrown open and there stood his older brother. “What you you faggots doing?“ That statement was seared into my brain. On occasion, I still wake up scared to death hearing it. His brother threatened to tell his mother and we were terrified. We quickly got dressed and my cousin followed his brother. I was left to worry about my mother finding out. That was also the last time my cousin ever played with me, in any way ever again.
I truly feel that this is the point in my past where all of my issues making friends started. Here was someone that I had been really close to and in an instant cut me out of their lives out of fear of being exposed for what he did. He treated me like I had the plague, afterwards. Our relationship never repaired. To this day, he barely talks to me, though I doubt he remembers the events that caused it.
Healing From a Father’s Disappointment: Understanding His Past & Reclaiming Your Path
My father was not an easy man. He had a hard childhood, I am fully aware of that. He was the oldest, so he was the first tasked with taking care of the family farm. His parents were not easy folk either, both were very strict in how they raised the kids and ran the house. During his youth, he had fallen in the driveway as his mother was backing up and ran him over with the truck. Thankfully, he was not hurt badly. For various reasons, my father never went into the military. He stayed home and worked the farm as his two brothers enlisted. This is to give context into his rearing and how he is now. He never changed his mindset or attitude, he just passed along that which he was taught.
I found out at a very young age that my father was disappointed in me, as I was not the male child he had envisioned having. I was more into science than building things. I didn’t like hunting and wasn’t a sports kid. My father became a scoutmaster when I was in Cub Scouts and he spent more time with the other boys in our troop than he did his own son. The guys that liked to play football were the first he went to.
There was a time, in my earlier childhood, where my mother and father were having a pretty heated argument. I remember her telling him to keep it down so his son didn’t hear. His response was, “he isn’t my son.” In this particular row, my father was convinced that my mother had an affair and that I was the offspring of that. I look a lot like my father, so there is no chance that I could be anyone else’s son. In one glorious fight he had with me about me taking martial arts, he took up a sword I had been practicing with and started swinging it at me, telling me that if my martial arts was so good, I could keep him from hitting me. I had a staff, at the time, and did my damndest to keep him at arms length without hitting him, personally. The whole event ended with him telling me how much of a disappointment I was to him. That has stuck with me, to this day.
From Trauma to Triumph: Embracing Self-Healing and Finding Your Delicious Life (and Beyond!)
They say that life is what you make of it and at fifty, I have decided that it is better to heal thyself and live deliciously than it is to dwell on all the negative things that brought me here. I can’t erase the trauma of my past but, at the same time, it has taught me so much. Taught me how not to be, what is most important, and how to be in the moment and let the past go. It’s a constant battle to do so, but worth it.
What about you, my readers, how has your past shaped you into the person you are today? Are you proud of that person? Maybe your dark past has caused more issues for you than good, how do you work through it? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you for sharing my life.
Gay in the CLE 