What do you recall of your first true dose (or doses) of cold adult reality, the realization which stripped away a happy misconception from childhood?

Yes. As a kid my sister and I were told "You two gotta get along because when we are dead you two will only have each other." "When we are gone you two will have each other"...... A sentence I held on to my whole childhood. As long as she was there, i'd be fine. Sure we knew we would have husband's and kids but as far as that one young family unit "When I am gone, you two will only have each other." It was a hard dose of reality when my sister took her last breath in front of me, my parents, and her husband. I never heard the line again "When we are gone you two will only have each other." 😔

I would have settled for anything happy in my childhood---even if it had turned out to be a misconception.

I lamented in my diary when I was 8, "Where did I get such parents, they're lice."

True story---unfortunately.

Being an adult has never been disappointing to me.

The first I recall was the death of my great-grandfather when I was 5. Great old guy. As I saw it then, he just never came back around. I missed him. Mortality makes poor discussion with a 5 yr-old.

So then, there was, of course, that whole business about Santa Claus. Reasoning the sheer logistics of his "ride" killed the belief. I never had to be told.

But before that, and maybe as a clue to it, I met astronomy in grade school. Understanding how puny we are in the vastness of space made me look at the stars differently, assess the world and my beliefs differently.

I'd like to answer the question that you posed in Tom's comments.

I was three and was just betrayed by both parents, I had a little mental breakdown for awhile. When I came around again, I almost lost myself again, when I realized that this wasn't going to end any time soon.

That moment when I go to school and realize that will be my prison for a year. Dry, and bleak, and suffocating. The tomb I will live in for those months, and all my effort to no avail in such an outdated education system. Wasting day by day, working towards a time that may never come. Like the poor unfortunate souls of helheim, seeking glory but never able to attain it...

I think I misunderstood the question :3

If I'm going to get to adulthood, I'm on my own.

The first time I was bullied was a cruel alert to the way the world really works.

When I had to work to get $

To pay for car in

When my father married the ESM (evil stepmother).  I suddnly realized that not all families were mopt the Cleavers. 

I think my mother was done being a mother before she left home.

She had been the oldest of 6, and it was her duty to "Help" raise her brothers and sisters. I think she had to give up a bit of her childhood in doing so. By the time I was 8, my oldest sister had become nothing less then a raging shrew thanks to her vast amounts of teenage angst. When my Memmere died from cancer that same year, my mother gave up on my sister, and let her leave home at age 16. What I hadn't realized until much later in life . . . my mother gave up on the entire family. My father had had PTSD after the Vietnam war, and that aided her decision to leave . . . I went with her, not so much as a son, but as a piece of luggage she would tote from one place to another . . . something she could talk AT but not TO.

It was odd to see her take on so many "Big Sister" girls . . . It was like she was trying to relive or redo the failure with my oldest sister . . . this time with "God" in her pocket and salvation being the "End Game" for each girl she took under her wing . . .

She often says to me "Your a good father." and I say "I know I am." without being conceded about it and without apologizing for not returning the compliment.

I am one of the fortunate ones. My memories of my early childhood are almost all good. We didn't have much money, and there were people around that made some poor choices, but my parents did a good job shielding us from the worst of it. We always knew we were loved, and we knew there were boundaries that we were not to cross or let others cross. It wasn't until I was almost 13 when my parents' marriage imploded. That was when the veil of childhood ended.