Part 2 - the Little Lottie

I have scarce memories of my younger years. Originally, I blocked out everything below the age of 12, but through years of therapy, little bits have been uncovered here and there, and I am growing quite a collection, although I am sad to say that there are very few (if any) truly happy memories.

Where to begin?

I guess my youngest years, the bits I know about are from old video tapes. I was a surprisingly loud child, and fairly headstrong! There are many cringeworthy moments of me shouting, and throwing strops, and many moments where I am shouting over others - I guess this is normal in a large family, but we can safely say that I grew out of this pretty damn quickly! Looking back at them, with my adult (and damaged) ways of thinking, I have often used these as 'proof' of how inherently nasty I am, although I am aware that this is a voice of someone else, and not entirely fair. :roll:

My youngest memory is my 3rd birthday - we were getting ready to move house, and everyone was too busy to have a birthday party - how weird that I can still remember that?!

In nursery I struggled to make friends, and I guess that this is when the bullying started. I was the odd one out, being Jewish in a christian school, and likely struggling with learning as the others did, I started to loose my confidence - I don't remember so much - the odd snippet of an argument, or the many nosebleeds that used to get me sent to A&E (usually from my clumsiness, which I never grew out of!)

I was a sickly child. I had tonsillitis every 2 weeks until I was 7 and had them out. I had chronic ear infections, and reacted to every inoculation I could have done to extremes. Mum is forever on about the 'awful' reaction I had to the MMR jab, which consisted of 3 separate reactions, including a temperature of 104.F - this was pretty much my only 'talent' :lol:

I guess taking this into account, it may go to explain why I struggled to make friends initially - I was missing a fair amount of school, though for the most part, mum just used to pack me off with my antibiotics, and see me at the end of the school day. I don't remember any of it, but I'm guessing I didn't enjoy trying to learn and socialising with bad tonsillitis constantly! Either way, I became very very aware of my differences, not helped by the sever dyslexia that no one knew I was struggling with.

Oddly enough, my gran is not a big part of my early years - she looked after us a lot (more then mum really), but she has a tendency to dote on the little ones - the issues with her usually start when music gets involved, and although I had a violin under my chin by the age of 3, she didn't get going for a while.

So, reception is where I begin to remember a lot - I was petrified of being left in school. I struggled to learn, and was sat on the stupid table. I was fearful of almost anything, and the class found it hilarious when I ran screaming from our teachers pet labrador!

Year one was similar, other then my continued clumsiness (walking into pillers seemed to feature regularly), I was totally in my own little world. I was 'imaginative' and 'creative', I had all the friends I needed in my head, largely due to having absolutely non in the playground, and at home I would carry on, playing with my imaginary pets, and making broomsticks in the garden.
Interestingly, I never had human imaginary friends - fairies, witches, unicorns, lepracorns, but never humans!

Year two is where I remember things getting bad. I was being severely bullied, and had a teacher that didn't 'believe in dyslexia'. She would regularly have me up in front of the class to tell me off, or ask me questions that she knew I couldn't answer, and this exacerbated the situation with my peers. I even remember being told off for being bullied - my bully got away scot free. Mum tried to help by talking to her, and also started taking me to dyslexic lessons - but it failed to do much good, and she ended up taking me out of that school and into another.

Relationships with my siblings at this time were also hard - my older siblings were not particularly lovely, and delighted in scaring me (particularly my brother). Many instances of him shutting me in a dark room with spooky sounds playing and locking the door, taking my teddy (and only friend) and leaving him on tree branches (I was petrified of heights, and thought Flop was going to die - 7 year old logic! He hid a fake tarantula in my bed, which my dad found very amusing! On my 7th birthday, I remember him and my sister shutting me in a box, and taping it shut. They carried me around in it screaming, and eventually (I was crying my head off), they undid the lid and I found a polly pocket in the bottom as my birthday present. Everyone found it hilarious - except me :roll:

It was around this time that I started having issues with insomnia - I was unable to get to sleep before 3 or 4am, and my parents used to regularly tell me off for this. I used to be extremely sensitive to noise, and was petrified of things hiding in cupboards, under the beds, in rooms across the hall, and of monsters sticking their hand through my window. Eventually they got so fed up of me crying in the night that they moved my bed into my little sisters room - although I was awake, I was in a room with someone, which took part of the fear out. Many times before moving me, I remember wanting to go and sleep on the floor by their bed - this wasn't aloud, although I sometimes snuck in when they had gone to sleep.

My new school was even worse then the last. It was catholic, and if i felt the odd one out at my first school, its not a patch on this one. I was treated as an idiot, and cant count the amount of times I was told that I 'Killed Jesus'! Much chasing me around the playground in breaks, and I used to hide as often as I could. Mum was teaching violin there, and I saw how upset it was making her, which made me feel bad.

Moved school again in year 3, this time to a 7th day adventist private school :shock: (seriously, IM A JEW!!!), got bad in year 4 when I had a teacher that 'dyslexia is where you have something wrong with your brain, and it doesn't work like normal peoples'. By this time, mum had twigged that on the first day of the year, if I came back saying I didn't like my teacher, there was usually hell to follow - and I was never wrong. Bullying was bad, it was both my class, and the class above - i was regularly chased, pushed off climbing frames, and being sworn at (in front of teachers who didn't care) - on top of the usual name calling and nasty comments. In year 5, my teacher made it the classes business to stop be sucking my thumb, and I was regularly blamed for loosing house points because of this.

Dad then lost his job, and I was moved to another school for year 6. Much the same friends wise, but family issues began to get more extreme. Mum and dad started arguing constantly, and mum would regularly chuck a suitcase into the car, and drive off. I was the only child panicked by this - and would run after the car crying, and sit by the window praying that she would be safe and come back. I genuinely believed she would run away forever, and was constantly worried that they would divorce. (I later found out that dad was struggling with depression, and money was tight - which is why they were arguing so much)

From this, came the fear at night that I would go to sleep, and wake up to a totally empty house. I had to say 'good night, see you in the morning', and get everyone else to say 'see you in the morning', else I thought they would leave me in the middle of the night. I can't explain to you how real that fear was - and it went on for years.
My brother moved to live with my gran at this point, as he couldn't stand 'the girls' - I didn't see much of him after that for many years.

During this time, there was music etc going on, but in honesty I remember very little - I know I was playing violin, and attending music schools/courses, and I know I couldn't read music. There is a picture of me in year 6 pulling the grumpiest face during practice time with my gran, so I'm guessing she had started full on by then, but I can't remember anything about it.


Well, thats my whistle stop tour of my earliest childhood - things didn't get totally crazy until secondary school  :lol: I know I had decided by my 2nd or 3rd school that mum couldn't help with the bullying, and I remember clearly thinking that it upset her, so I should stop talking about it - I did, and that never changed. From then on, I was looking after her feelings - I don't remember exactly when it was. I also didn't have much to do with my dad - no real memories of time spent with him, although he lived with us.

Its almost like someone switched the whole lot off - this caused me great distress in later life, and it has taken me years to build the picture of things above. Originally, I simply could remember non of it at all - which is a bit weird!