How many children disappear?

I know two people – a middle-aged client and myself – who ceased to exist at the very start of high school. In his case that was ninth grade, age 14; in my case, tenth grade, age 15. We both disappeared, and only the body remained. He had no voice, no thoughts; I stood in my bedroom, empty, never begun. The child self, about to walk into a non-child life it had no ingredients for, disappeared when the new door opened, and there was nothing to replace it. In that incredible zone, something had to happen.

What happened was both of us began reading books of ideas, subjective ideas clothed as truths. He read philosophy. I read Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, Alan Watts, Libertarian Party ideology. No one directed us to these pursuits, only a core dread and its powerful felt need to be conscious, aware, adult, which we were completely incapable of. And all of a sudden, we were ready for high school. We had ideas that gave us a stolen ego. We had a personality that formed from this ego and from those ideas and all the parts of our earlier childhood, pulled together by the psycho-magnetic force of desperation. While we couldn’t “relate” to girls or actual reality, we could argue political ideologies with the genuinely bright students, who did not know what we were.

In my case (I don’t know this about the client), I had disappeared earlier, at seventh grade, the beginning of junior high. That, too, had been a Rubicon, from little child to big child, that I was unable to cross. But that was easier to finesse, as junior high schoolers are still immature and can adopt screen names: some bravado, some sex talk. I had the identity of being a good arm wrestler.

I am sure he and I are not the only two people in the Western world who disappeared at these critical mile markers. There must be countless others. And look, adults: You don’t see it. None of you even know the fact of disappearing. No one knows what failed to grow, and what replaced non-existence. Look what you can’t see, adults, parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and feel a bit of humility, and fear.

I know, generally, what led to this dead end – a lack of grounding in reality, age three, four, five, six, seven and up, from alienation in the family, repression of feeling, anxiety, inner self-soothing. Notice how these two-dimensional labels and concepts turn into four-dimensional developmental failure, a false self, and then a peculiar way of living ’til the end of one’s days.