If I could pin point one emotion which dominated my early years, it would have to be a crushing sense of guilt and doom. A feeling that something terrible was going to happen any minute and therefore I must be on red alert to be ready for it.
I can actually pick out something that happened and it does seem very insignificant but it had a devastating effect on who I was (or thought I was) and changed my world view forever.
I would have been about two years old and I was alone in our garden. It was a still and quiet day, no noise appeared to come from anywhere. I realised in a moment that I was entirely alone and not in the sense that there was no one with me. No, it was a realisation that no matter what I did or who I surrounded myself with, I was alone in this world. Then I heard the sound of a cuckoo crying out into this stillness and quiet. I was filled with a sense of dread and doom laden fear.
Maybe it was a first panic attack, who knows? I knew at that point for me, the world was a dangerous place and there really was no one who would or could shield me from the danger.
How dramatic does this sound for a two year old to be thinking? Yet this was the truth for me.
Little did I realise then just how much terror awaited me when I had to go to school and I could no longer stay in the relative safety of home.
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