My Wounds Are Not The Last Of Me
For a long time I didn’t know my inner child. Carried her around for many years, but my mirrors only reflected my physique. While some people wanted to hold on to the old me, I wanted to move on from her as fast as possible. I wanted to give birth to a new life. A new me. But now at least a decade later, I realize that I just wanted to move away from the pain and survival I experienced growing up, so I blocked it all out. Of course, I was aware that my childhood wasn’t the easiest of them all, but never in my life, did I fully allow myself to feel all that was still hurting me. Next to that, I often specifically focused on my experience at home, that my life after or besides our house in St. Catharina had no room to be acknowledged. But the truth is that my survival didn’t stop at home. High School was brutal for me. I have vivid memories of teachers calling me ugly when I shaved my hair off or a mentor saying “oh, you are actually smart” when she handed me my rapport as if that wasn’t even a possibility in her mind. And unfortunately, this is just a snippet of it all, the list of things on them hurting me is long and painful.
My heart still breaks for mini me and I truly cannot believe how all these people found employment as teachers. I hope that they no longer work in education or that they have at least done the work to minimize the suffering of children. Because, out of all the books they have made my mom purchase, the biggest thing that they taught me was to unlove myself. Tight to my experience at home, my loudest takeaway was that in order to be safe, one must stand in line and be quiet. Along the years, I actually started to believe that I was indeed ugly, weird and too emotional, and as a response I slowly but surely suppressed every single form of (vocal) expression. Whether it was revealing myself through crying, talking, laughing or singing, it was all locked in a safe because I have seen what could happen when I was to reveal my full self.
So yes, hiding became my second name. I felt such comfort in being invisible, I could’ve easily gone throughout the day without speaking a single word. My silence was so loud that a guy in my class once asked me like; ‘Aqueene, can you actually talk?’ . It was that serious. He didn’t even pose the question in a judgemental way, but he was genuinely concerned and/curious.
Now, in all honesty, I have always been an introvert. I have always had a natural shyness about me, but some of my silence was also just a trauma response. It wasn’t an innate character trait and it definitely was not a sustainable way to live life. Because let me be the first to tell you that when in hiding the wants of us stay unmet and eventually the loneliness creeps in. It becomes even more difficult to make ourselves visible because the gap between hiding and revealing has become too big. It eventually requires too much of us to show up as our full selves when we remain in a state of fear, sadness, suppression and stoic stuckness.
"When in hiding the wants of us stay unmet and eventually the loneliness creeps in. It becomes even more difficult to make ourselves visible because the gap between hiding and revealing has become too big".
But the undoing of that is what life is about. And no it’s not fun. It’s not easy and it is definitely not fair. No one wants to have to clean up the shit others did to them. The need for healing is no one’s voluntary request. Most of us don’t seek out to emotionally work on ourselves unless there is work to be done to minimize our suffering. The need for healing is simply reactive to the pain once caused first by others, but later on also by ourselves. And the unlearning of all that is where the heart of life rests. While it is all extremely scary and tremendously uncomfortable, I do believe that when we do the work, we eventually get to experience the fruits of our emotional bravery, our emotional labor - because labor it sure is.
"When we do the work, we eventually get to experience the fruits of our emotional bravery".
Mine started a while ago, but the ‘Love Letters to my Inner Child Challenge’ , triggered something in me that led me to tap into the isolation, othering, microaggressions and lack of belonging, I experienced at Radulphus College. It was an invitation to see the many wounds of me without having to conform to the normative expressions of children - may it be play, innocence or the use of bright colors. I won’t lie, I struggled with it tremendously, thinking that love letters need to have this encouraging tone and bright note. But I wasn’t there yet. In fact, I now know that the most honest revelation of me is essentially the warmest love letter I could ever give myself and my inner child.
I don’t have to be joyous when my heart is heavy.
I don’t need to use bright colors when they don’t resonate with me.
And when this clicked, I finally ugly cried my eyes out, slowly shedding all the layers of illusive protection. The layers that blocked my ability to cry freely. The layers of defensiveness. The layers that hinder me to embrace my softness, my authentic self. I really had a breaking point yesterday, eventually bawling in my mother's arms while I shared all the labels, name calling and incidents I experienced.
I guess it’s safe to say that my inner child was/still is wounded and it will probably take a while to embody a healed one. But in the midst of all my heaviness I still believe that my wounds are not the best of me. Hell, my wounds are not the last of me. Just give me time.