My intuition is that I was a cat in a previous existence. They hide themselves away when they feel unwell or mopey.
Even before JWS my family had a fierce pride: "don't start crying now or when I get you home I'll give you something to cry about!" Or, when I asked my mother why she had told a pack of lies about me to the teacher at parents' evening:"I had had to say something - I didn't want to look like a fool."
All signs of conditional love - Boy oh boy, is that not why my family bought into the cult racket - now they could justify their behavior as righteous before Jehovah!
Or after my experience with the babysitter: "If you tell anyone, I'll say YOU made me do that." ( a pre schooler?!)
My Mother hated how her second husband wouldn't share his feelings. She'd ask him what was up, if he told her she would then mock and berate him for feeling that way. (If she thought his feelings were "soft" - ie vulnerable) That is one phrase I remember "don't be soft".
In company we were to be polite and quiet. After saying "excuse me" a thousand times, if I then piped up with what I wanted to say at the table it was "And what have YOU got tosay that's SO important?"
I believe that you learn to trust (or otherwise) in the almost pre speaking part of life, which is why it is so difficult to describe feelings we never were allowed to find the words for.
Going to the kingdumb hell and being expected to lie and say everything is fine at home - even though nobody else is there because of some disgusting altercation. When other kids at school started saying in 1976: "Where's the end of the world knowall?" And I had to deny my own reality (again) and say JWs never said anything about the end of the world coming in 1975.
Yeah - it is so much easier to hide away somewhere, far from the madding crowd, where no one teases, mocks, lies or blackmails you.
HB ( of the "not now Josephine, I'm hibernating" class)
