Thinking back on my child hood

It’s interesting thinking back on your childhood and how it’s affected you as an adult.

I was just talking to my childhood friend, Michelle, the other day about when we were young. To give a little background, we grew up riding together, we also worked in the barn – we were basically barn rats – and had, as some would call it, a competitive friendship.

So we were discussing how we would always be trying to do more than the other. For example, if there were 20 stalls to clean, we were each trying to either do more than the other or at least half the work faster than the other. And that still plagues me to this day: I’m always trying to get some crazy amount of work done by some made up deadline.

Also when I was a barn rat, one barn owner I worked for always had some off-side comment to say about my work ethic. In my eyes it was more about efficiency and always trying to find a way to do the things I wanted to with out wasting time. Now as an adult that too sticks with me. I never can quite say, “That’s too much for me to handle,” or “I don’t have time to add that on.” It’s just not a thought in my mind that I might do less than the ‘other guy’.

Also my same friend Michelle was the person I was always jealous of. Jealousy is definitely not a nice word to talk about, but it’s true: everything she did or got or went to felt like what I wanted, and she got it first! She got her own horse before me, jumped bigger, and was more popular; everything it seemed I wanted, she had!

When you have someone like that when you’re young, you can go one of two ways with it: get down about it and be more jealous, or work harder to get what you want. I’m not sure I made a conscious choice for the latter, but I don’t think I spiralled into the former. At least not on a permanent basis.

As a young person you develop your defence mechanisms. For some it’s humour, for others it’s anger or drugs or something nefarious, and for others like me it is backing away. I’ve tried various outlets. Writing seems to be the best for me, or completely absorbing myself in something like a new project or cleaning the house and then moving all the furniture!

I have also noticed that how you experience communication in your youth affects you when you’re older. I’m sure it changes over time to some extent, but if you don’t feel heard as a kid you may get louder, or on the other hand if you are told everything you say is funny as a young person this will probably trickle into your adulthood confidence. I definitely felt heard as a young person, and therefore assumed everyone wanted to hear my opinions and thoughts – so here I am writing my thoughts on things every week for you all to read!

Lucky you!