There's a thousand reasons to love Growing Pains but I wanna highlight these particular lines here, when Priyanka asks Steven if there was "anything bad in [his] childhood that particularly stuck with [him]".
I find it very interesting that the very first thing his mind goes to when she asks him that is Cookie Cat's cancellation.
Like isn't that kinda weird? It makes me wonder if he understood what she was actually asking him. She just showed him all of the fractures on his skeleton from what she actually describes as being "trauma", so when she asks if he'd recovered mentally and if there was anything that stuck with him, is it not implied that she means something dangerous and traumatic?
(The meta reason for why the writers made him say this was probably to highlight how vastly different SUF Steven is to the very start of the series, where the height of his problems was the cancellation of his favourite ice cream, compared to now when he's suffering through CPTSD and lost without direction when everyone keeps leaving him. Like "hey remember when he cried over ice cream lol?" But also let's talk about the possible reasons for why he decided to say this)
A couple of possibilities are that he was lying/joking to downplay his problems again, but considering his immediate next line, "and then I got attacked by a giant bug monster":
He actually says this like he's just remembering this himself, like "oh yeah, that horrible thing happened too", and then he continues with that kind of intonation for the rest of the horrible things he lists off, like he's only just coming to terms with how terrible things really were for him
So if the way he says all of the traumatic things shows that he's only just realising they're traumatic, what does his first line show about his thoughts on this? "Do you remember anything bad in your childhood that particularly stuck with you?" "I guess I kinda freaked out when they cancelled my favourite ice cream." I'd like to point out too that it also sounds like this one line was intended to be his entire answer to the question "did anything bad stick with you?" Kind of like he was about to follow it up with "but other than that, not much else". That's what it sounds like he was about to say before he remembered "oh yeah, there was other stuff too"
So basically, his initial answer is summed up as meaning "no, there wasn't anything bad in my childhood, I don't know what kind of trauma you're referring to." I wonder here though whether he thinks this because he doesn't believe what happened to him was traumatic or because he doesn't remember what happened to him at all
Which is a more complicated question that it sounds, because there's evidence he does remember the arguably most traumatic thing to happen to him, because he describes it to a stranger in Bismuth Casual. "One time, White Diamond tore into me. Literally, ha ha. She, uh, she took my gem, I'm part gem by the way, she pulled it right out of my body".
(There's a lot to be said about Bismuth Casual as well, but I'll save that for another post cuz) this tells us he does remember some stuff, and he obviously knows it's something bad, cuz he's saying this to try and relate to someone who just spoke about something else that was bad in their life. But I'm not sure he actually believes its something traumatic because of the way he just so casually brings it up in conversation (and by the way, Connie herself doesn't react to it like it isn't something to bring up in a casual conversation)
The way he says tho that "that was just the early stuff", it makes you think that he didn't remember it as such because it was a long while ago. But if time were the biggest issue, he wouldn't have immediately thought of Cookie Cat. If the difference between the early stuff and the recent stuff was how bad it was, then he would immediately have thought of White Diamond.
The "stick with you" part of the question makes it sound like the Cookie Cat thing is what has actually been playing on his mind more than anything else. And when you look at the background, it's never said out loud, but he does own a lot of Cookie Cat merch, like the alarm clock, and Cookie Cat is what appears in his nightmares too, telling him he's no longer needed
I think the reason his mind went straight to Cookie Cat is because of the good old Ignore Your Problems thing he's so good at. He was especially positive, excitable and happy in the face of danger and trauma back at the beginning of the show, and back then it did kinda look like he was just a happy kid, or that the things happening weren't that big of a deal. But in hindsight that was really just the beginning of his retreat into that toxic positivity of his
And I think he latches onto Cookie Cat specifically, cuz the news of its cancellation happens right before his gem glows for the first time, then he spends all day trying to get it to happen again, thinks it happened because of Cookie Cat, eats the last remaining ones and then he gets attacked by a giant bug monster.
He learns that his gem powers are tied to his emotions, not specifically ice cream, but the memory of those ice creams do get tied to his powers in his mind, and maybe he keeps being obsessed with Cookie Cat because subconsciously he still thinks it can help him? ... Suddenly Cookie Cat being the one to tell him he's not needed in his dream hits differently now. So maybe that's why it "stuck with" him, at least in his mind
It does happen where people's minds will go elsewhere when faced with trauma, and its happened to him too, which I've talked about before. After he got back from the trial and Lars literally died saving him, the only things he could think about were Dewey's campaign and then his relationship with Connie. The gems explicitly say that what happened to him was traumatic, and its Pearl who says this and tries to talk to him about it, and that's when he cries that "Connie hates me!", talking only about Connie and how he feels about her
Cookie Cat definitely sounds like this kind of thing for him again. First Pearl asks "do you wanna talk about the trauma that happened to you?" and he says "no, I wanna talk about Connie." Then in Growing Pains again, "do you wanna talk about the trauma you've gone through?", "no, I wanna talk about Cookie Cat"
He doesn't even realise he's doing it either I don't think, it's just so ingrained into his subconscious that it's the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks about trauma, whether he wants to or not.
I'm reminded of that one short where he's making a review of a Wacky Sacks product he's just bought, and there's just all this chaos going on in the background that he doesn't even address. And further to that honestly, that's definitely the role that Crying Breakfast Friends played for him during the Sardonyx arc too. Basically he's always been doing this, and it's such a relatable thing about him too-
ANOTHER example is the proposals too. The truth came out about Rose being Pink Diamond, and he sings a whole song about how he doesn't want to think about it. The lyrics are literally like: "There's an awful lot of awful things we could be thinking of, but for just one day let's only think about love." And that's pretty nice but I think he really does forget about that "just one day" part and he just keeps thinking about everything other than his problems forever and ever and ever, WHOOPS and that's why he brings up Cookie Cat immediately upon being asked if there was anything bad from his childhood that particularly stuck with him GOODNIGHT EVERYONE
