I didn’t plan for it. It wasn’t something I invited. But it happened. It started with a memory. A harmless one, at first glance. A smell of cheap cologne mixed with old books and something burnt. It slammed into my chest like a ghost coming home. I was seven again. Small, voiceless, and trying to make sense of a world that only seemed to know how to teach through pain. That’s when I saw her. My Eyes wide with questions I never got answers to. Holding pieces of worth like broken toys in hands too small to carry the weight.
She looked at me, and I looked back. And then she cried.
Not that sort of crying that wails and sobs. No, no. She was less vocal. More dangerous. It was a kind of sorrow that creeps out in little drops, such as blood out of a paper cut, you never notice until the stain has sunk too far in. Her sobbings were not noisy, they were abject. Silent. The kind that scream without sound, that ask, “Why didn’t you protect me?” And I had no answer.
We all carry that child, don’t we? Tucked behind the ribs. There are secrets behind resumes, relations, filtration of smiles. We construct lives on top of their graves and we call it healing. Then there are wounds that never heal. Certain wounds are taught to behave. And others--they wait. My inner child waited. Until today.
I saw flashes of all the times I’d told her to shut up. To grow up. To get over it. I watched the years I blamed her for the things adults did. I observed the way that I embarrassed her to feel. Because she cries so easily. Because of having too much need. For being too soft in a world that only rewarded the hard.
And then one day I knew--I was all that she dreaded. The type of grown-up who will not listen. The type that gaslights treatment with work. Who mixes up detachment with strength. I got acquainted with how to make walls so high that even she could not get to them. Now I can see it, however, the cracks. The windows where light attempts to come in. Where the child still knocks.
It has a psychological term, repressed emotional memory. However, no word teaches you what it is like when it wakes up. The second it scratches its way out of your subconscious and sits next to you in the old friend sense. The instant you think of what it was to feel disempowered.
To scream inside your own mind while smiling through family photos and school days and “I’m fine”s.
And still, I ignored her. For years. I buried her beneath expectations, trauma, and the illusion of adulthood. I thought if I ran fast enough, worked hard enough, loved deeply enough, she’d stay buried.
Even when you pretend that pain is not there, it does not go away. It evolves. It becomes your inner voice of shame, your self-sabotage, your fear of intimacy and your inability to trust joy. That is the child that cries who will become the adult who cringes when someone gets loud. Who requires continual reassurance. Who does not know how to take their rest without feeling guilty of it.
And today I saw her today, the first time in years. Naked, Vulnerable, Beautiful in her brokenness and pain. She didn’t ask for much. Not even forgiveness. Just my presence. Just for me to sit beside him, hand her the pieces I tried so hard to forget, and say, “I believe you.”
It is spookily human. How we all want to be embraced not merely in a physical way but in a way that is emotional and spiritual. Our longing to be heard, not by other people, but by ourselves. And how we continue to run away from the very pieces of us that possess the map to our cure.
It is not the tale of a conclusion. It is not a clean, tidy story with a moral at the end of a bow. This is a bloody fact. A continuing unpacking. An encounter with shadows I used to term as protection.
I would like to tell you it gets easier. That after you have seen your inner child weep, then you get to know how to console them so well. Healing is not linear though. On certain days I embrace her. Other days, I ignore her all over again. We’re learning together.
Well, that is what I can say, there is power in seeing. On the not-looking-away. By deciding to remain in the discomfort long enough until it teaches its name. In letting the pain talk without trimming it to make it palatable.
There’s power in the broken pieces, not for the reason that they make you a victim, but because they make you real.
If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve felt it too. Maybe your inner child is still waiting for you. Maybe they cry in your dreams. In your relationships. In the echo between your accomplishments and your emptiness. Maybe today is the day you sit beside them. No solutions, no explanations, just your presence.
Because the truth is, the world doesn’t need more people who’ve mastered the art of pretending. It needs more of us who are willing to feel. Who are brave enough to confront the chaos inside and whisper to our younger selves: “You deserved better. I see you now.”
Today, I saw my inner child cry.
And I cried with her.
#quotes #healing #selfgrowth #journal #reflection #positivity #darkpsychology #hive #ecency #ladiesofhive #reflections #hiveposh #blogging
