Still Here

There is a kind of pain that comes from realizing you never got to be a child.

Not because you grew up too fast.
Not because life was hard.

But because pieces of your childhood were taken from you before you even understood what was happening.

The older I get, the more I grieve the years I can’t get back.

I grieve the little girl who spent so much time trying to survive that she never got the chance to discover who she was. The little girl who learned to be quiet, obedient, and small. The little girl who carried burdens that never belonged to her.

When I look back, so much of my childhood feels like a blur.

I don’t remember freedom.

I don’t remember feeling safe to be myself.

I remember control.
I remember manipulation.
I remember fear.
I remember boundaries being crossed.
I remember learning that other people’s needs mattered more than my own.

And now I’m left trying to piece together a life that was shaped by wounds I didn’t create.

The hardest part is wondering who I would have been.

Who would I be if I had been protected instead of controlled?

What dreams would I have chased?

What confidence would I have had?

What parts of myself never got the chance to exist?

I mourn the person I might have become.

Years have passed. Years that I spent doubting myself, questioning myself, shrinking myself to fit the expectations of others. Years spent carrying pain that wasn’t mine to carry.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all.

I didn’t deserve what happened to me.

I didn’t deserve to lose so much of myself before I even knew who I was.

I didn’t deserve to spend adulthood untangling damage that was done in childhood.

And yet here I am.

Trying to find myself in the aftermath.

Trying to understand my own mind.

Trying to separate who I truly am from who I was taught to be.

People talk about healing as if it’s simple.

What they don’t talk about is the grief.

The grief of realizing that no amount of healing can give you back the years that were lost.

No amount of healing can hand you the childhood you should have had.

No amount of healing can answer the question that keeps you awake at night:

Who would I have been if I had been loved the way I deserved?

I don’t know the answer.

Maybe I never will.

What I do know is that beneath the pain, beneath the anger, beneath the regret, there is still a part of me searching for the life that was always mine to live.

A part of me that refuses to disappear.

A part of me that is still here.