Trauma just doesn’t “go away”.
It changes a person. Tests reality. Alters time.
It not only affects a person’s ability to grow, but also robs them of their ability to keep their innocence.
Somehow, It simultaneously thrusts you forward and pulls you backwards…
Clinging to yesterday while begging for tomorrow.
In some ways you can’t grow up, move on, or really change that much at all…
Until you have healed, processed, accepted what has happened.
While in other ways you are suddenly
Much older
Much wiser
Much more present than you ever have been…in the worst kind of way.
There is no going back, no undoing what has been done.
There is no way to unlive the moments, to unfeel the feelings.
So there you are. Stuck in the miserable limbo that life has dealt you:
Too young and too old.
Too soft and too hard.
Too much and not enough.
Wise beyond your years, yet still stunted.
Still searching.
Still hoping…
To go back to the person you were back then, who you have been pretending you still are all along.
Until one day you can find the strength, the space, the opportunity to realise…
That there is no fairy tale happy ending.
But maybe there is something real, even sacred, in surviving anyway.
In living anyway.
In loving anyway.