/ot/ - off-topic

>Childhood Stories and Trying Not to Regress

I can only choose one.

>Anyone else wish they could not go back in time, but just be as fearless and weird as they were like right before they hit puberty?

I wish I could say I was like that, but even around age 6, I remember worrying about being too fat, too ugly, or too tall and dealing with a lot of lowkey emotional abuse at home. I was always so self-conscious and couldn't fully enjoy anything I did because I was constantly analyzing and criticizing myself.

What I do wish though was that I could go back to my teen years. I was pretty depressed and suicidal back then, but at least I didn't have any other responsibilities besides school. After school, I could just seal myself up in my bedroom, play WoW for awhile, and fall asleep watching all the good shows on Adult Swim like Metalocalypse and ATHF.

Pic related is probably one of the only things I truly miss from my childhood

>tfw you were a little shit as a kid.
>tfw you hate your childhood self.
>tfw you are constantly assaulted by regret for things you did as a child.

No thanks anon.

i feel like i cant achieve past progress because i didn't mature past the age of 14.
i'm stunted for a reason; out of my control.

i want the chance to start over, family illness be damned!

Looking back, as a child I was probably worse off socially then I thought. I had friends but they were kind of just… there. I never felt like they were more than anti-boredom devices. It got a bit different as I got older. But not by much because I have always been super introverted with few interests. I must be a boring person to a lot of people. I think maybe I'm too dull to be considered much fun. Even as a kid I had a problem with having fun. A lot of stuff just seemed like I was doing it for the benefit of other kids now that I think about it.

I was gonna made a thread like this actually. I wanted to tell a story. In elementary school there was this girl named Rayann. All the teachers doted on her. It drove me crazy. "Oh Rayann colors so nice", "Rayann has perfect handwriting", "Rayann has lovely hair". I wanted to scream.

So fast forward a few years. I haven't seen Rayann in a long time. It's like 8th grade age I guess. And I'm at the school bazaar because my siblings were still at that school. My mom told me that she saw Rayann in the hall by the back entrance and that she had gotten very fat and wore thick glasses and had short hair. So I secretly laugh to myself. Thinking it's vindication. And later that evening I bump into her. And lo and behold she's enormous and had really thick glasses and a short haircut that totally ruined the appeal of her wavy blonde hair.

I felt even more vindicated. I was ecstatic. And looking back at it now I think it's so stupid. I feel so lame for ever thinking such a thing about some girl that never asked for all that attention. I should have been mad at the teachers for showing too much favoritism while some students were struggling and needed their attention more.

It's amazing how your views change as you grow up. I hope a lot of those teenage vendetta chans on social media one day realise how petty and cruel they were over stupid things.

>>179427
>Rayann

What a shitty name.

>>179417
Me too, anon. I was molested at 5 and my mom became hyper-protective after that. She also used to fat-shame me (as in, call 11 year old me fat even though I was just a little chubby. Now she complains about my bony wrists. Wtf do you want woman???). Despite that, I WAS pretty carefree until about the age of 12 – I went from super outgoing and slightly obnoxious to really really shy. I was socially anxious up until about last year when I started uni.

I do miss high school even though I was a fucking boring shut-in because I did well in school without having to try much and I had a small group of friends that were for the most part pretty chill/funny and some of who I still talk to today (though one of them was toxic and probably the main source of a lot of my shyness/anxieties). I was constantly sealed in my room watching Youtube videos and TV shows. It was nice not having all these responsibilities that I honestly feel too emotionally repressed to deal with properly.

I am inclined to agree. I'm an oldfag and when I was in school kids weren't diagnosed with anything unless they were a danger. I always had something off with me on top of crippling anxiety but it really peaked around 5th grade. So I am bitter as fuck at how most kids have so many resources these days for psychological support when my only option now is to pay thousands or just figure it out on my own because I'm an adult.

I had a few instances that made me start to drift away from reality when younger, mainly getting beat up in kindergarten by a group of boys and bullied relentlessly but a bigger girl all year, but after that I got into my own little world and was happy for a while. I'd draw and play with my toys and eventually video games and just live through them. Plus anime. The fact I liked anime made me creepy loser back then. But once 5th grade came around, people started to say "so and so said this mean thing about you" just to make me feel bad. I was one of the poorest kid in my grade so people made fun of me a lot because my mom cut my hair and I didn't get new clothes often. Everything in my life socially was downhill from there.

I don't want to be young again because my life didn't really begin until a few years ago, but I do miss that happy place I had for a few years. When a tamagotchi or trading for a new sticker gave me meaning to my life and I was happy with that. When TV actually distracted me from my life without my mind racing. I hate what a rotten adult I became and how my emotional issues affect my family.

A trauma occurred in my life under 9 but another really major one that lasted years and involved serious struggle starting at age 14 took whatever youth I had left from me. I feel like I had no childhood and that I had to start becoming an adult from the time the first trauma occurred. Now, I dress childish more often than not, I'm pretty sure I have BPD, am with a man old enough to be my father, live life like it's the late 90s/early 2000s in terms of music and movies (pretty stunted), get awwed very easily by cute things and want to be able to start life over again. I was bullied a lot in school because I had an eclectic style, plus for a year or two dressed quite masculine so at that time the bullies spread rumours I was a man. From that I learned I couldn't care what people thought of me. I haven't cared since I was a teenager, but being with an older man has made me question a lot of my behaviors. I also had some very cruel teachers in high school, two specifically that would single me out almost daily. I feel like life was harder than it should have been, I just want to be peaceful in my own bubble now.

>>179413
My childhood was pretty shitty so in the end I'm glad my adulthood is way better in comparison.

The only regret I have is this weebish sense of amazement I had in middleschool and even highschool when my friends and I started discovering anime and mangas and giving each other weebish names (I was Ichigo-chan bc obviously Ichigo from TMM was my fav). Getting my first neko-ears or going to my first con lel (it was shitty)

Aside from that I was an ugly kid and never was popular until I hit my early twenties. Cute kids get a pass for being weebish or quirky but I was fat and ugly so I was the school weirdo, though that did help me build a strong character. I don't even feel like I've peaked yet so that makes me feel better about growing up, unlike my girl friends who freaks out about getting older and try to convince people they still get mistaken for highschool students lmao.

I actually think I'm more fearless now. I just don't give a shit anymore, life's too short for that. I spent too much time trying to please other people, and I ended up worse for wear. Now I just do what I want.

As a kid I would burst into tears if I got a single question wrong, I was that hyper-critical of myself. My self-esteem was low because of this girl in my "friend" group who would pit us against each other by talking shit behind our backs. She had it in for me, insulted me a lot - said I was fat (I was a chubber back then, but far from obese), made fun of my heritage, and she even stole from me. None of us really liked her but we were all doormats so we didn't say anything and kept kissing her ass, hoping we wouldn't be singled out. I stopped talking to them after we left primary school.

Middle school and high school weren't any better either. I feel like nothing happened in that 6 years. I learnt nothing and I made no real friends. It's still a struggle to make friends because I'm a huge introvert and have weird hobbies. But I'm not bitter about it anymore like I was in middle school/high school.

>>179413
We have a vent thread
We have a 'lost childhood' thread
We have an advice thread
We have a sexual abuse thread
We have a mental health thread
we have several ddlg flavoured threads

Why, oh why OP? Fucking why?

>>179476
This is not how I expected this thread to go

Like I got sexually abused too, didn't everyone? We're all girls here.
You just look past that to the good memories, and don't let abuse manifest as a weird fetish thing later
I thought
Too late now I guess

>>179496
>I got sexually abused too, didn't everyone?

Uh, no. I guess I just got lucky or something since this is apparently more common than I previously thought. Sage for OT, sorry.

TFW I will never again have a best friend who wants to make music videos with anime figurines and who wants to play "fairies" with real lockets they had gotten from a garage sale

I want to go back. (although to be fair, there was a lot of in-fighting and drama, even then)

Who here #misseschildhoodbooks? Stuff like animal ark. I remember the one with the sheepdog pissed me off so bad, because her parents kept telling her she couldn't keep the dog.

I have bipolar disorder and when I'm feeling low I struggle not to regress, purely because I was mentally ill from a young age and feel like it stole my childhood, and my mind tries to convince me that I can "fix" that by re-living it as an adult. Add in being intensely bullied (age 7-16) living in a home where my mum's emotionally abusive boyfriend made everyone miserable, and identifying as lesbian (up to age 14) in a rural town… the nicest bit of my childhood was being asleep.

/sage for blogpost

i give a lot less fucks now than i did when i was a kid thanks to my worsening dissociation and schizoid tendencies. my childhood didnt last long and i very quickly became the shy, weird kid who was bullied everyday and didnt have a single friend so i developed low self esteem which spiraled into major depression over the years. after my mother split up with my father, i moved around too much and she moved us to the middle of nowhere with some old man who turned out to be extremely abusive which fucked me up socially and caused a lot of problems for my family. it didn't help that my mother had anger issues so i was verbally assaulted and emotionally manipulated on top of her boyfriend already acting crazy. life was hell for little 8 year old me back then.

i find comfort in overly cute/girly things now because i never got to actually be a normal kid. everything was just a giant void full of depression so i relive it by buying stuffed animals and watching old cartoons which is as far as ill go age regression wise. care bears and rainbow brite have been my guilty pleasure lately. sometimes i involuntarily skip when im alone and walking to get snacks from the kitchen which i always wondered why i did but after i learned about age regression, it really makes sense.

anyway, sorry if this reads incoherently. my mind is a pile of sludge this year i feel like i chugged a bunch of cough syrup and the effects never went away lmao

>>179417
I would love to open an arcade / bowling alley / skating rink / place like this. Bright colors, glow lights, black walls with the galaxy painted on it with a creepy ass moon face. You would get cheap cute prizes from playing the games - stickers and those pom pom ball animals. Lots of candy like what is in OP's pic.

>>180240
Omg same, I have fantasies about it all the time. I love dimly lit arcades and laser tag rooms. There are no arcades in my country anymore, just shitty casinos. Even places designed for kids like bowling alleys and laser tag are full of slot machines which I think is really age inappropriate and sad. All the coin pushers are full of toys which I imagine cost 1c and aren't even worth trying for. The only DDR machine in the city is at the very back of a casino in what's essentially a storage room, me and my friends visit it regularly.

I'd love to open an arcade and start small with all the machines we're used to seeing and as I gain a profit, try to collect vintage games, lots of different DDR machines, weird "4D" simulations and import loads of machines from Asia. It'd just be a joy to take trips over there to research new machines and I'd make sure to buy lots of cute toys that can't be bought here. We've never had skating rinks here either and I think they'd really catch on considering ice rinks do so well every winter.

Maybe if I win the lottery one day haha.

I had a really nice childhood, when I hit puberty everything went downhill. I want to go back to childhood, it was so comfortable.

When I was high I got a very deep sense of understanding that i experienced CSA but i dont actually remember it so idk(USER HAS BEEN PUT OUT TO PASTURE)