My first fear

One of my first memories is being washed in a hospital sink. I was about 2 at the time and still not able to do it myself. Seems I was a slow learner 😀

Few years ago I went to visit my former foster family. They were taking care of me from the age of 4 to 7. I have very found memories of them so I decided to pay them a visit and say thank them for taking care of me when I was little.  Since the moment they opened the door they recognised me and called me by my former name. To explain when I was adopted my name was also changed.  They invited me to dinner and we starting sharing stories about me when I was little. There were some happy stuff and some really sad which I will not mention now. At one point it became interesting.

The conversation started like this : ” You were always good and behaved well, except during bath time.” This intrigued me so I asked :” What do you mean except during bath time?”

Answer : Whenever you saw water you screamed like somebody is performing an exorcism on you!

As I was told they usually needed a team of 4 people to be able to tame the beast. Also the additional problem was that after the adventures of Little me and the water of doom I did not want to speak or eat for the rest of the day. So as you can guess they did the act always before bedtime. It worked for a while but then I noticed the pattern and started to hide before dinner time. So they started to do it randomly and not straight after eating cause they figured out that I will not want to eat at all then. For a long time they had to do it like this and they even took me to a psychologist to try to find the reason. At the end even the psychologist did not help cause for some reasons I did not remember my water problems even when I was a kid. It seamed that whenever I was introduced to water outside of a cup I went frenzy and wanted to escape. They compared my reaction to those of a cat. Why a cat you ask? Well it is because apparently during the fight against water I did not have a problem to bite anybody who was holding me. As I love to swim and a hot shower during winter I wanted to know how did they finally save me from my fear.

How I won 

After 1 year I was at their home they took me to the sea-side. It was supposed to be horrible for me so they tried to find somebody to take care of me for a few days. As nobody could watch me they decided to risk it. And then it happened. I saw the sea and just jumped in it. No screaming, no crying and most importantly no violence from my side. On the same night I asked to take a bath because the sea salt was itching me and i just entered the bathtub and opened the faucet. They could not belive it and thought as soon as we leave the sea-side I will go back to my old self. They were wrong, at “home” I caused no more problems and finally became the perfect little boy they knew I could be 😀

 

For me all of this was new. As long as i remember I loved water and still do. I will use every opportunity to go for a swim and will enjoy it as much as possible. So hearing that at one point of my life water was my mortal enemy made me realise one thing:

Fear of water was the first fear i ever had and also the first fear I conquered!

So tell me what fear did you conquer?