Member-only story
I Went to Eleven Different Schools Growing Up.
Narcissistic parents create disrupted childhoods.
I already had a lot of problems when I started kindergarten in 1965. I was so anxious that I would not walk on the playground unless my cousin Leanne or someone else I knew held my hand. One time, no one came to take me by the hand and I just stood there, paralyzed.
Another time, the same thing happened on a freezing cold day. My hands got so cold that when my teacher looked out the window and saw me and brought me in, they were burning with cold. I screamed loudly and cried. Another teacher came into the room and put my hands under her arms to warm them up. Then I calmed down.
I walked to school in the morning because neither of my parents were willing to drive me down the highway from our house to the school. There was a railway underpass on the way that scared me. As I walked under it, it felt like the cars speeding by were inches away from me. There was also a dog tied up to the outside of a furniture store on the way who barked as I walked by and I was terrified of him too.
Yes, I walked alone to school along a one-mile stretch of busy highway at the age of five.
My mother sometimes picked me up after school, but did not explain when or why she occasionally did this. One day I…
