My Earliest Memories

I have a few early memories that I believe foreshadowed my Codependency.

One of these memories took place at a ski area daycare center. I must have been too young to ski, probably around the age of three or four. As I recall, I did something that called for attention from the daycare workers, and they yelled at me severely for it. I was crying hard. I thought, I’m a bad person because I did this . I still have residual effects of this treatment to this day.

I have another memory of my sister, Alice, and me playing in the downstairs hallway on a Sunday afternoon. We had little plastic horses and dolls we were playing with. One of the dolls was named Little Linda. Alice said that Little Linda was going away for a while. The fact that Linda was leaving made me feel really sad. As I look back on it now, Linda represented my sister Alice somehow. This was the first time I was fearful of being abandoned and rejected by my sister.

I remember crying when my first grade teacher, Mrs. Powell, moved me into the second-grade reading group. I had been separated from my peers, which, to me, meant I had done something wrong and was being punished. I felt very sad and didn’t understand what I had done wrong. I cried the whole time I sat there. Mrs. Powell was reading us a story about a girl crying at the breakfast table.

“Annie sat at the breakfast table and her tears landed with a plop in her cereal bowl. Just like Juliet’s,” Mrs. Powell said as I sobbed.

Mrs. Powell was very sweet and would never hurt a fly. I think she probably couldn’t understand why I was so upset. I think subconsciously I was afraid my sister wouldn’t love me anymore if I was as smart as her or at her level in school. So I stayed in first grade.

When I was still in grade school, a lady at a restaurant scolded me and I lied about why. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. I was at a salad bar fixing myself a plate. I saw some pickles that looked interesting. I selected one, took a bite, decided I didn’t like it, and put it back in the bucket on the salad bar. A woman saw me perform this angelic transaction.

“Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” she said, shaking her head and frowning at me.

I just happened to have a heaping pile of apple butter on my plate right then. So I went back to the table and told everyone that the lady yelled at me for taking too much apple butter. Fibber! I knew what she was mad at me for. I felt shame about this for a long time. When I did my CoDA 9th Step, I confessed to this little sin. I forgave myself for judging myself for not being perfect.