Wow! We could have met each other! Holy M-80, that could have been fun.
As I have aged, I find more people who can identify with my experiences, and I realize I was not so alone as I thought at those young ages.
That is the thing, though-many of us lived in these narrow, emotional silos, and not only didn’t have the skills to talk to other kids who might have told us we weren’t alone...those kids were in the same boat.
A bunch of kids playing blind-man’s bluff, navigating those early years. A parent might (and often did) tell us that what we were going through was not in any way unique, but being the supreme self-centered beings we were, we would have dismissed that with a sullen “You don’t understand.”