Play Made Wrong

What an interesting question!

How did it happen?
That I do not know

how to play,
that I feel very guilty

whenever I do.

Was it my parents

not being able to play?
My father

starting to quarrel?
My stepmother

being too deprived herself of any sense of play.
Growing up in the war.
Going hungry.
Born in 1941 in Central Europe.
What did that do to you?

But then, maybe it is something very different.
Survivors guilt comes to mind.
My brother,

he died when he was 14 months old.
My mother died when she was 32.
So much grief.

And my brother never learned to play,
beyond with the rattle
in his crib.

Too much pain,

too much sadness,

too much trauma.
And of course being loud
is being bad.
And will result in being punished -
beaten,

probably.

How in the world
will you learn to play
like kids do
if you have all this
as a millstone
around your neck?

What feelings do you have about play?
Where do the feelings come from?

Not deserving fun and joy and feeling good.
Being inherently defective, rejected goods somehow, not worthy.
Being too stupid, and too unpopular.