No emotions yet, but we had a good discussion about guilt. I was actually kind of surprised to realize I have felt guilty about things and unlikeable for as long as I can remember, back to when I was three or four. When I was about four, I had this game I made up where I wrote down the names of everyone I knew on Popsicle sticks and I would sort them, like by the first letter of their name or birthdays or something like that. I would do this obsessively; I could play with those Popsicle sticks for hours at a time, and I always felt super guilty about it for some reason, even though I can't remember anyone ever telling me I "shouldn't" play with those Popsicle sticks and even now I can't see anything "wrong" with it; but for some reason, I always felt the need to hide those Popsicle sticks, and if my parents ever came into the room when I was playing with them I would put them away really quickly. Maybe just because my brother was also very obsessive about sorting things and it worried my mother, so I extrapolated from that?

I also felt really guilty when I was little about which kids I liked, which I guess now I would call "crushes," but obviously at age five I didn't understand them that way. There was this one little girl in my kindergarten class who I always wanted to be close to and whenever we would dance I always wanted to be beside her so I could hold her hand, and I think I knew that there was something "wrong with" or "weird about" that, because I never felt that way about any of my "friends," just about this one girl. But this couldn't have been coming from my parents, because I literally never mentioned this girl's name in front of them, ever. I kept her a secret because in my mind there was something shameful about it that I didn't want anyone to ever find out.

The same thing happened with this girl I knew when I was seven. I loved this girl SO much; she was smart and kind and she had the nicest smile. And she had this long blonde hair that I thought was the most beautiful hair I ever saw that went all the way down her back, and her mother braided it for her every morning. And this one is a hard one for me, because when I explain it like that it just sounds like a crush, but I was also very obsessed with this little girl's family. Her brother was my brother's age, and I always wanted her brother to be friends with my brother, and I was completely obsessed with her mother, who came to our class once a week to sing with us.

I loved this girl and thought she was beautiful and got nervous around her and always wanted to be close to her, but I ALSO envied her family a lot and was very jealous of her for having a "normal" brother and a mother who hugged her and kissed her and lovingly braided her hair for her every morning...and the saddest thing was that I would "comfort" myself by imagining that her family wasn't actually so perfect, and I would think that maybe her father (who I had never met) hit the kids or hit her mom. I don't know where I got these ideas at age seven, but for some reason that's how it was for me, and I felt SO guilty about my love for this girl and also the way I would think about her life maybe not being so perfect. When I was seven. Old habits die hard.