HFCS: effika’s blog

I promise I’m not on anything, but I may be a bit dehydrated.

A friend posed a question to me recently— when did I realize I was me? I’m not certain I have an answer for that, but it did lead me to think about how self-aware I was when I was a child.

Somewhere around 5-7 years of age was a very nice stage where I was self-aware enough to be me, but not so much that I muddied it up with thinking. I laughed, cried, played, and ate as I felt I needed to, didn’t concern myself with what others thought, enjoyed my friends when they were enjoyable and didn’t feel bad when they were being persnickety. In those years, if I wanted to hug someone or hold hands, my friends and I did so and didn’t think about what our other friends would say.

After age 7, though, something changed. Around that time, comparing myself to my peers became paramount. Everything I did was being scrutinized and judged by others (kids are cruel), so I had to figure out what they were looking for and act accordingly first. Most of the time that failed. (I was a very awkward child and didn’t figure out how to effectively “game” social systems until I was fed up with being a dork in high school.) Life since that point has been about deciding how I will react.

I am under a lot of stress right now, and I wonder if I would be happier if I could go back to that mindset I had when I was 5-7 years of age: simply existing with the give-and-take of life, not having to think about it constantly.