"Normal" Childhood

My childhood was very normal in terms of mental activity. Born in Seoul, South Korea, I was raised in a middle-class family along with two elder siblings. I grew up with love from my parents and didn’t have specific worries.

My brain started to be active as I grew older. I often played with imaginary people in an imaginary setting when I was around 7. For example, I set myself in an imaginary scene of a battlefield and had gun battles against imaginary enemies in the front yard of my house. I shot the enemies and hid myself under objects in the yard. My imagination was so real that the gun battles were never boring. As the picture shows, the wound I had on my knee from the play didn’t matter to me; I just felt happy to play using my imagination. Playing in an imaginary setting was dynamic, spectacular, and satisfying.

My brain started to consume its energy in an unpleasant way as I became too old to play with imaginary people, though. Unlike the settings and scenarios that my brain had made for an imaginary battleground, the scenarios I made during the adolescent years weren’t pleasurable at all. Most of them were related to tragic incidents. For instance, I imagined a burglar broke into my house and ruined my family. The image was so realistic that I couldn’t help taking every measure to prevent the potential invasion. Therefore, I needed to make sure the doors and windows were locked securely.