I discovered last year that this is a twisted version of a little space. This was the feelings of my childhood. Neither parent gave me much attention unless I achieved the expected level of excellence, and my mother did not protect me from my father, she delivered me to him. Neither protected me from the world… I was delivered to it as well.
From the littles I have known, little space is supposed to be a happy and peaceful place of comfort. My space doesn’t feel like this. It feels like a place where pain is to be expected. Perfection is to be expected. I cannot control if I will receive punishment or reward… but too often the reward is “not being punished.” This is my trauma state.
If I try to think back to a blissfully ignorant existence, there wasn’t much of it that I can remember. Things turned sour when I started pre-school at age 2 and just got worse from there. People made fun of my skin color. They made fun of my Asian features. They made fun of my uncut genitals. They made fun of the fact that I was a “fake” kid with “fake” parents. The events involving hand-me-downs and fur from my humility posts followed alongside them. I was 4 when I remember thinking that I hated myself and wanted to die. I wanted someone to save me and protect me. My parents didn’t want a child that was weak. Those times don’t sound like a little space.
Through hard work and natural coordination, I quickly rose to prominence in sports and academics. For a while, I was the top athlete in my grade. This earned me some praise, but I was scared of losing it more than I enjoyed it. Something happened then as I was starting to get older. My body began to change, but not in a good way. I was always small for my age but then I got thicker and wider before I got taller. Pretty soon I was short and fat. My mother and sister served as constant reminders of this… and that people would judge me and treat me badly because of it. It started with them.
I entered Middle School as a 4’1″ chubby kid. My father didn’t care because I was still a top athlete. But then I bloomed late. Everyone else grew faster than I did. Height began to matter. These years were severely awkward for me as my body continued to get thicker faster than I was getting taller. I felt grotesque and people treated me that way. I had become a cold and mean person on the outside. I managed to grow 17″ in 3 years and finally my body started to catch up in height and muscle development. This doesn’t sound like it would be part of a little space either.
Over the course of that process I was a mess. I went from being a happy and outgoing child when I was very young, to a bitter and sarcastic prick. My savior was M. She was so pretty. She was popular. While she was only two years older, she hit puberty early and towered over me for most of our time together. M would protect me. She would shield me. She was my caregiver. In exchange, I just had to do exactly what she said and accept that she would bind and imprison me, overpowering me if I resisted. This is where I learned to crave the feeling of utter defeat.
While I would see M several times a month, that left a lot of time by myself. What she was doing to me began to bleed over into my play time. It wasn’t long before I began to act out scenes with my action figures. This one is M. This one is me. I would make her character overpower mine, tie him up, and lead him around on a leash to his new life as her prisoner. This embarrassed me greatly. I kept it to myself. I secretly looked forward to her next visit. Deep down, it became increasingly clear that I was a freak. This went on for about five years. When I hit puberty she was my ultimate and only masturbation fantasy. I was so ashamed. Does this sound closer to little space? I don’t know.
As playing with toys is often part of that… if I was playing with them like I used to, I would be completely humiliated and mortified. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me. I wouldn’t want anyone to know the true me. Instead I would rather be utterly defeated, restrained, and forced to submit to her will. Does this sound like little space? Or is it just my submissive mental space?
It seems like this is one of those cases where things got so twisted up that it became a perversion of itself. I struggle so badly to perceive myself outside of my own frame of reference and experiences that I have no idea how to answer the original question.
If anyone has any ideas, I’m open to hearing them.
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