People do outgrow friendships and you might forget (or perhaps "cease to think about" may be more accurate) a close friend from your early childhood. This seems normal enough.
So I do agree that Turin forgot about Nellas in part because he outgrew her, "for he grew swiftly, whereas she seemed no more than a maiden of his own age, and was so in heart for all her elven years". (With respect to the question of Nellas' age the description of her being young in heart as opposed to simply young led me to believe that though childlike, Nellas is not a child).
I had not considered the question of Turin trying to consciously suppress his memories of Nellas in part because it seemed as if his time with her is one of the happier periods in his life.
Quote:
From Nellas Turin learned much concerning the ways and the wild things of Doriath, and she taught him to speak the Sindarin tongue after the manner of the ancient realm, older, and more courteous, and richer in beautiful words. Thus for a little while his mood was lightened, until he fell again under shadow, and that friendship passed like a morning of spring.
Children of Hurin - Turin in Doriath
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There doesn't seem to be anything traumatic connected to the friendship that Turin would want to repress.
(In reading the last sentence of that quote though it now occurs to me that the duration of the Turin/Nellas friendship may have been much shorter than I imagined - that their "morning of spring" friendship is more akin to a real world "summer friendship", great while it lasts but then the friends go their separate ways to forget and be forgotten. )
However, what sparked my interest in this topic is the conversation between Beleg and an adult Turin. While I accept that you can outgrow friendships and cease to think of a childhood playmate, I find it odd that hearing Nellas' name in Beleg's story triggers no memory for Turin.
"... I cannot recall her" Turin tells Beleg. When Beleg looks at him strangely and reminds him that as a boy he would walk in the woods with Nellas, Turin then says:
Quote:
"That must have been long ago," said Turin. "Or so my childhood now seems, and a mist is over it - save only the memory of my father's house in Dor-lomin.
Children of Hurin - Hurin among the Outlaws
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This mist over his childhood, well the Doriath portion of his childhood, is intriguing and it doesn't seem like normal forgetfulness. Given that the mist lies over part of his childhood are there other things that Turin cannot recall? I also wondered whether one could link this mist to the shadow that is said to have marred Turin's youth.