Childhood Trauma

by SL

First of all, my English is not the best, and this might be a little out of topic, but anyway I am a 16 year old boy, and my problem is, when I was a little kid, about 5-6years old, me and my family where on a holiday trip to the Canary Islands, everything was great and fun, until one day at the hotel, when we where eating dinner in the restaurant, what happened to me was that there was an old couple sitting over us living the life, they where around the age of 70+, and my mom and dad told me and my sister, that one day they too would be as old as them and that we would be as old as they where.

What happened to me next was that, as I mentioned, I was a little kid of the age of 5-6 when they told me this, I was traumatized with what they told me, and I started to think of my mom and dad that I loved so much, one day would get old and die. I started to cry around the table where we were eating and my parents got concerned, and were asking me why I was crying. I didn't want to tell them at the beginning because I thought that it was kind of embarrassing to tell them that I was crying because of what they had told me, but at the end I told them and they started to make me feel better and all that stuff, and telling me that it would go over.

Later we went to the hotel room and went to bed, and I couldn't stop thinking about what they told me! I was so terrified about the thought of my parents growing old and dieing, after lying in the bed thinking about this I thought to myself, "Ahh.. I will probably forget about this in some time", but the days went on, and even after weeks and months- even years! I couldn't stop thinking about it. This made me feel so sad every single day of my life, it affected me so bad I didn't even want to grow older, or taller, I wanted to be a kid forever, and I started to do stupid things like pushing my legs against the floor to try to make myself shorter and started to walk a little bent down to look shorter, which my mom always asked me why I did it, but I never told her.

I tried so many stupid things to try not to grow older, because of the thought of growing up, and my family growing older and one day dieing was so horrifying, I even have thought of suicide. The years passed on and around the age of 12-13 I was finally able to stop thinking about this every single day, that felt so good!

After some more years I almost never thought about this any more, now I am 16 years old, and I have many good friends, and everything is great, but I still have problems with my self esteem, which causes me to get bad grades at school.

I am so glad I stumbled over this site, when I Googled I hate my life, it feels so good to share this with others who have problems too, since I have never told this to any of my friends, and never told my parents since the day it happened either.

Thanks for reading my story :)