“Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.” 

“Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning like a little animal that’s locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it’s too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly.”

“Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it’s sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart.”

— Tove Ditlevsen, from The Copenhagen Trilogy, tr. Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman

incendies, wajdi mouawad (2009)

“J’ai un enfant dans mon ventre, Wahab ! Mon ventre est plein de toi. C’est un vertige, n’est-ce pas ? C’est magnifique et horrible, n’est-ce pas ? (...) Quand j’ai entendu la vieille Elhame me le dire, un océan a éclaté dans ma tête. Une brûlure.” (nawal)

“N’accepte pas, Nawal, n’accepte jamais. Mais pour pouvoir refuser, il faut savoir parler. (...) Toi, Nawal, quand tu sauras, reviens et grave mon nom sur la pierre. Grave mon nom car j’ai tenu mes promesses. (...) Toi aussi tu laisseras à ta fille la colère en héritage. Il faut casser le fil. Alors apprends.” (nazira)

“Simon / Est-ce que tu pleures ? / Si tu pleures ne sèche pas tes larmes / Car je ne sèche pas les miennes. / L’enfance est un couteau planté dans la gorge. / Et tu as su le retirer.” (lettre aux jumeaux)

L’enfance est un couteau planté dans la gorge. On ne le retire pas facilement.

Could you do a compilation on the bittersweetness of childhood / growing up / healing from childhood trauma ?

“I’m stuck here in a cycle and I am getting older but I am not growing up and my heart is getting soft dark spots on it like a fruit that has gone bad or is soft because too many hands have squeezed it but then put it back down.”

— Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

“Mom, I'm tired / Can I sleep in your house tonight? / Mom, is it alright / If I stay for a year or two? / Mom, I'll be quiet / It would be just to sleep at night / And I'll leave once I figure out / How to pay for my own life too / Mom, would you wash my back? / This once, and then we can forget / And I'll leave what I'm chasing / For the other girls to pursue / Mom, am I still young? / Can I dream for a few months more?”

— Mitski, “Class of 2013”

“L’enfance est un couteau planté dans la gorge. Tu as su le retirer.” (Childhood is a knife stuck in your throat. You managed to remove it.)

— Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies

“I don't miss it, because I have my childhood more now than when it was happening...Yes, there were many joyful things mixed with the blood.”

— Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart, tr. Alison Entrekin

“I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did.”

“I am learning to be cared for. I am learning to be parented. I’ve returned to my childhood, the scene of the crime. Eileen and Curry wake me in the mornings and put me to bed with kisses (or in Curry’s case, a gentle chuck under the chin). I drink nothing stronger than the grape soda Curry favors. Eileen runs my bath and sometimes brushes my hair. It doesn’t give me chills, and we consider this a good sign.”

— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“And now he is so much older, Harold is so much older, Julia is so much older, they are three old people and he is being given a sandwich meant for a child, and a directive—Eat—meant for a child as well. We are so old, we have become young again, he thinks,” ““Jude,” Harold says to him, quietly. “My poor Jude. My poor sweetheart.” And with that, he starts to cry, for no one has ever called him sweetheart, not since Brother Luke. Sometimes Willem would try—sweetheart, Willem would try to call him, honey—and he would make him stop; the endearment was filthy to him, a word of debasement and depravity. “My sweetheart,” Harold says again, and he wants him to stop; he wants him to never stop. “My baby.” And he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child’s whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tendernesses, of fondnesses, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parent’s reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.” “It ends with Julia finally going to the kitchen and making another sandwich; it ends with him eating it, truly hungry for the first time in months; it ends with him spending the night in the extra bedroom, with Harold and Julia kissing him good night; it ends with him wondering if maybe time really is going to loop back upon itself after all, except in this rendering, he will have Julia and Harold as parents from the beginning, and who knows what he will be, only that he will be better, that he will be healthier, that he will be kinder, that he won’t feel the need to struggle so hard against his own life.”

— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

I don’t miss it, because I have my childhood more now than when it was happening… Yes, there were many joyful things mixed with the blood.

Clarice Lispector, from Near to the Wild Heart, tr. Alison Entrekin