play time...

I've been flooded with little reminders of treatment lately. Pins people have posted of things like gingerbread houses remind me of times friends and I tried to build gingerbread houses. Things people have said about going to all night dance parties remind me of the fun (but totally illegal, don't do it!) dance parties we would have. When I laugh, actually laugh, I remember what it felt like to laugh again for the first time in a long time with good friends as we built forts of blankets in the fishbowl, laughing manically because we were finally being fed. I tried to do a kartwheel the other day (bad news nears) and thought about the time we kartwheeled up and down the halls of renfrew one night, laughing and listening to top 20 music. I sat with friends the other night at Startbucks and talked about all of the crazy and funny things we did while at Laureate.
Looking in from the outside, one might think that all we do in treatment is sit around and goof off or play and act like little kids. Indeed, we do sit, a lot, and we do play from time to time which may or may not resemble things children might do...but what they do not know is that most of us (though not all) grew up too fast and never learned to play. Most of us, overachievers or victims of some sort of trauma, or simply too ready to grow up, bypassed the simple aspects of childhood like healthy playing, and never really learned how to let our guards down and play. My parents used to think that treatment wasn't effective because it was too much like a college setting where we just lived together, ate together, and goofed off together. Little did they know that the goofing off and being a kid again is an incredibly therapeutic part of the healing process. At least, it has been for me. I know this may not be the case for everyone.
Learning how to loosen up and incorporate some of that play into my life has been difficult for me. I tend to get so serious when I'm living my life and forget that I can be a little freer. I can do a kartwheel in my living room when no one is watching just because I feel like it. I can pop in finding nemo as a guilty pleasure and cry at the end. I can still practice what I learned within those many four walled rooms.
Recapturing that childhood is not something I want to do completely because I have a lot of painful memories associated with childhood, but I do feel a sense of loss when I think about my childhood. I feel like I never had a chance to have one, so learning how to take bits and pieces and bring them into my life in a healthy manner now is important for me.
Anyway, today do something that makes you feel like a kid again. You are never too old to be a kid at heart <3>