When I was a little girl

For weeks now, I've had this persistent phrase go through my head: 'When I was a little girl...', and then it stops. I realize that I don't know what to say next, and I put the thought aside for another day.

It occurred to me today to sit down and try to finish the sentence...

When I was a little girl, I felt a little bit misplaced in my family. There is no doubt that I looked like I belonged in the family, but when I was quite young, I really did wonder, quite seriously, if a mistake might have been made. My family were a fairly gregarious lot of people, whilst I was, not exactly shy, but private.

Whilst the other members of my family were not all that interested in formal learning, I rather enjoyed it. I was a reader, a researcher, a piano player, a dancer. Owing to my childhood circumstances, I had a very deep yearning for privacy which has followed me through my life. I adore to be in the country, and when I am there completely alone, or even better when I am there completely alone with my husband, I feel most content.

When I was a little girl I read lots of literature. Of all the stories I read, I adored 'Jane Eyre'. In spite of my fetish for spanking, I hated it when they mistreated the little girls at the charity school and my heart broke for Jane and her little friend, Helen. Yet, the ending was heaven for me. Mr. Rochester, firm but kind, much older but hopelessly smitten by Jane, acknowledges his feelings for the girl. It is completely satisfying; not overdone, but simply an acknowledgement of his feelings for her; at last. It is not at all impossible that the story remained close to my heart and in my psyche all my life.

So, when I was a little girl, I was an impressionable child; a romantic, with a longing for things that spoke to me. I loved the perfect piece of material for a dress, or a sense of satisfaction with a dance well done, or an essay well written.

When I was a little girl I felt insecure. People here and there would tell me I was pretty but it wasn't really until a man said, "I want you" that I truly believed it. I didn't so much ever want to be pretty as I wanted to be ravished.

When I was a little girl I longed for the day when I could have a home of my own; a family of my own. One day at the races, perhaps I was in my late teens, I heard a man of about 30 say, "Allow me to introduce my wife..." How wonderful, I thought; to be "a wife"!

When I was a little girl, I was a scaredy cat. It was my husband who took me to other countries and introduced me to the pleasures of new customs, new foods and new experiences. And, look at me now: biting at the bit for new adventures!

When I was a little girl I thought the boogie man would come and catch me, and I hid under the covers, convinced that if he couldn't see me, I'd be safe.

When I was a little girl, I was mother to my brother. He's forgotten now, but I read to him every night and frightened of the boogie man himself, he often slept with me in my bed.

When I was a little girl, I was like a piece of putty; just waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to come along and make me as he wanted me to be. A little girl to the core, I needed a boy to complete me.

Once I was a little girl, but I never really fully grew up. To this day, my husband calls me "LG"! And, so it shall always be.