Here's you. You're nine years old. You're dragged away from your surroundings and put in a place where every move you make is monitored, where you can't make any independent decisions about what to do at any given time, where to go, what to eat, what to drink. What to like, what to think, who your real friends are, who your real enemies are.
This goes on for five years. You finally get the brains to rebel, at 14. What took you so long?
Does it sound like prison? I know it does. What do you think that does to a developing pre-adolescent mind?
I sometimes think (and I always think too much) that my brain was irreparably ruined by boarding school. What else accounts for bouts of lethargy, or when I refuse to "go along" because everyone else is, for my interminable irritability? My irrational need to be alone yet need people to reassure me of my place in the universe?
I wish I could go back and talk to me when I was nine years old. To tell me that everything would turn out okay. I wouldn't have known what I was talking about, probably.
But I do now.
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