Wednesday, July 30, 2008

(inner?) child psycho-analysis

Looking through stuff I found this water color painting obviously from when I was younger and decided to scan it to show you.
I think the caption was a bit cut off in the scan, but hopefully the title is easily seen despite the bad penmanship of my younger self. It says "Prettier Aziza" and under that, "the butterfly is prettier". Now I have no way of knowing how old I was when I drew this, based on the handwriting I would guess somewhere between kindergarten and 3rd grade, but I'm not sure. The picture seems like a happy, normal child's artwork, but the words are concerning for obvious reasons. Did I not think I was pretty? I've seen small pictures of myself, I was the cutest little thing on the face of the earth! Is it possible that I really had a low self confidence? I know that my parents would never make me think that of myself, and that would have been the most logical place for a child to get those odd ideas, other than my brother. But that makes no sense.

This is surprising because now my self asteem is very high in most respects now, there wasn't much time in my life that I thought I was inferior. I always made friends very easily and enjoyed playing at recess with them. I suppose there was time in 1st grade where I didn't have many friends, but I don't remember thinking down on myself because of it. I don't remember blaming myself for my parent's divorce, or getting bad grades and feeling bad, or being ridiculed or insulted by the other children. But most importantly, I don't remember feeling bad about myself, it was a shock to me to find this. Maybe I blocked out the bad stuff.

I have come to know from pictures like these that are found, and a secret 1st grade diary that I found, that I was a very, very deep child. I had ideas and feelings and wrote poems and song lyrics. Also what was surprising to me was that I was well aware of both the male and female anatomy at the age of 6, and had an entire entry explaining the differences of the two. The show Friends, I think may have endused that. But this is beside the point. I know that I was capable of having an idea vastly different from another, and I also know that what I was thinking was not exactly what was written down on the page before because of lack of grammar, good spelling, and vocabulary. So maybe what I think this picture means is a misunderstanding?

If it had simply had the title, I would have thought that it was a grammatical error meaning that Aziza is pretty, as the butterfly is. Or had it only had the caption, I would have also assumed it meant the butterfly was pretty. But the two phrases together makes a very compelling argument that I genuinely thought that that butterfly was prettier than myself. But the fact that "Aziza" is not depicted in any way in the drawing makes me think that that is not the case. I know that children's thoughts are not the most logical or understandable, but I think that there would have also been a picture representing myself had this been the case. Am I right? I don't know...maybe I'm just being hopeful that I was not troubled in any way as a child. I keep thinking of myself in that way as a kid, even though I keep remembering things I was very distressed about. Self confidence problems at a litterite age I don't recall at all.

Does it even matter what I thought at that age now? Why do I care? I think most of it is the fear that there is more beneath the surface than I was aware of. Which I always knew, but still is surprising and scary to me.

Wonder about if I had known that my older self would be analyzing my art work later, at the time I painted it. Nevrmind, that would be creepy.

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