Turin the Forgetful

[Morwen]

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.

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

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:

"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

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.

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Morwen

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.

I think you're on to something here. Immediately before the last quote you give, Beleg asks him,

Originally Posted by UT, Narn i Hîn Húrin

Túrin, have you lived always with your heart and half your mind far away?

It seems he had indeed, and it takes little imagination to guess where his heart and half his mind was - in Dor-lómin, with his mother and unborn sister (and probably his friend Sador and the memory of Lalaith too). I think this was the 'shadow' mentioned in the tale - in the same place, by the way, where the corresponding passage in the 1920s Lay of the Children of Húrin more clearly names

the sundering sorrow that seared his youth

(bolding mine).
But there may be more to it. I'm reminded of another dialogue, where Beleg, when Túrin refuses to accept any 'gifts out of Doriath', tells him:

Originally Posted by UT Narn, Appendix

Then send back your sword and your arms [...] Send back also the teaching and fostering of your youth.

(Sounds like his long patience with Túrin is wearing a bit thin here, doesn't it?)
To me it looks like Túrin, in his grudge against Thingol for exiling him (when he had actually exiled himself), had sub-consciously or half-consciously repressed the memory of any positive aspects of his life in Doriath (such as his childhood friendship with Nellas)which could have contradicted his feeling that he had been wronged (cf his chosen name Neithan) through no fault of his own.