When one thoughts leads to another...

I was looking on Pinterest and a post titled, "Therapeutic Toy List". I read through that post and found it interesting. I started thinking about how interesting it would be to be a therapist to younger children.

It is such a different approach then traditional talk therapy. With younger children you use play therapy and they express and shows their thoughts and feelings playing, toys, dogs, drawings and such.

Somehow thinking about that lead me to finally acknowledge something... I think i realized it just recently, but I'm admitting it for the first time here. Here's the story: I started babysitting Jack when I was 12. Around that same time I started babysitting 2 of my cousins, I'll call them Jess and Nick. I'm not going to even try to ballpark how old they were.

Anyways, I had both babysitting situations overlapping at the same time frame. When I was 14 I remember I started telling my friends these stories about stuff Nick would do, except in real life Jack was doing them. My favorite story to tell was about things Nick would do with his neighbor friend that was a girl. At the time I knew I was lying and making up these stories, but I didn't know why. I remember telling myself that I needed to stop telling them and lying. I eventually stopped telling the stories, but never told anyone they were lies.

Now here I am almost 20 years later and I can see WHY I was saying those things. I was trying to tell my story, these things were really happening, happening to me. Yet, I couldn't admit Jack was doing them or doing them to me. So to tell my secrets in a safe way I portrayed Jack as Nick and me as a neighbor girl. That way, it was safe, but I could still get my secrets out! It is so interesting how the human mind works. How, at 14, I could take what was happening to me and twist it around in a way to make it safe to share without even realizing it. Want to hear something else ironic? Once Jack's mom gave me a ride to Jess and Nick's house. Probably doesn't sound as ironic as it is, but oh well.