The first memory

My first memory isn’t soft. It isn’t warm. It isn’t the kind of thing people smile about when they say “childhood.” It was a monster taking what didn’t belong to him.

A man my family trusted. Looking back, I see how they dressed betrayal in gold—how they fed me to him with phrases like “He’s family,” “Don’t cause a scene,” and “I’m sure that didn’t happen.” Those words became a soundtrack in my head long after they forgot me.

They chose him. Not me. Not the child standing in front of them. That moment rewired everything. It taught me that safety is a myth, that beauty is something other women get to feel, and that trust is a luxury I can’t afford. I became the advice-giver who couldn’t take her own advice: the broken one, the one the world chewed up and spit out.

I used to wonder if I was born broken, or if that moment split me open. I’ve since learned that trauma doesn’t just leave bruises—it rearranges the architecture of your soul. It teaches you how to blend in seamlessly. How to smile when you're screaming inside. How to become the quiet girl, the good girl who doesn’t make trouble. Because trouble gets punished, and silence gets rewarded with survival.

But silence is a heavy inheritance. It stains everything. It follows you into adulthood, into relationships, into mirrors. I’ve spent years trying to scrub it off. Trying to feel beautiful like other women. Trying to believe I’m worthy of softness, of joy, of being chosen. I give advice I cannot take. I build others up while crumbling inside. I know how to hold space for pain, not to ask for help. I know how to love but not how to trust.

This chapter isn’t about what happened. It’s about what isn’t made of me. The girl who learned to read danger in a smile. The woman who built armor out of poetry and ritual. The survivor who is still learning how to live. I didn’t have a language for what happened. Not then. I only knew that something inside me had gone quiet.

That I stopped laughing the way that I used to. I flinched when certain people entered the room. That I became very good at pretending.

Pretending is a survival skill. You learn to smile with your mouth but not your eyes. You learn to say “ I’m fine” with a voice that doesn’t tremble. You learn to disappear in plain sight. I became the girl who didn’t make trouble. The one who sat still. The one who didn’t ask questions. Because questions led to shame. And shame was a fire I couldn’t survive twice.

I watched other girls grow into themselves—soft, radiant, unafraid.

I envied their ease, their beauty, their belief that the world would meet them gently.

I didn’t know how to be that. I only knew how to brace for impact. How to scan a room for exits. How to carry my body like a secret.

And yet, even in the silence, something in me refused to die. A flicker. A pulse. A voice that whispered, “You are still here.” I didn’t know what to do with that voice. But I held onto it. I began to write. Not for anyone else. Just for me. Just to name the echo. Just to make sense of the rupture.

Writing became my ritual. My rebellion. My way of saying, “I exist." I wrote poems that bled. I wrote fragments that cracked open the truth. I wrote until the silence had somewhere to go. I didn’t walk in healing. I crawled. I stumbled. I resisted. For a long time, I believed that naming it was enough.

I used to think that if I could just say “I have PTSD” or “I struggle with depression,” people would understand. That I would understand. But naming is only the beginning. Healing asks for more. It asks for truth, for tenderness. For the kind of courage that doesn’t look brave— it looks broken and still trying.

Therapy was the first place I said it out loud. Not the clinical words. The real ones. “He hurt me.” “They didn’t protect me.” “I don’t feel safe in my own body.” I expected shame. I expected disbelief. But instead, I was met with stillness. With someone who didn’t flinch. Who didn’t look away. And that changed something. It didn’t fix me. But it permitted me to begin.

I thought diagnosis would feel like validation. Instead, it felt like exposure. Like standing naked in a room full of people who didn’t know what to do with my pain. Some offered pity. Others offered silence. A few offered distance. I learned quickly that not everyone wants the truth. Some people prefer the version of you that doesn’t bleed.

But I couldn’t go back to pretending. Once the words were out—PTSD, depression, anxiety—they echoed through everything. They explained the panic attacks. The dissociation. The way I couldn’t sleep without checking the locks three times. They gave shape to the chaos. And in that shape, I found a kind of power.

Not the kind that fixes everything. But the kind that says: I’m not crazy. I am not weak. I am responding to a world that hurts me. My mind is trying to protect me. My body is trying to survive. And that is not failure. That is resilience.

Long before I had words like PTSD or trauma, my body was already telling the story. I couldn’t sleep. I was startled by sudden sounds. I felt danger in places that looked safe. My chest tightened when someone stood too close. My breath shortened when a voice rose. I didn’t understand why—but my body did.

It became a map of survival. Hypervigilance. Muscle tension. Digestive issues. Migraines. These weren’t random. They were signals. My nervous system had learned to scan for threats, prepare for impact, to never fully rest. I lived in a state of constant alert—wired for danger, even in silence.

Touch became complicated. I craved it and feared it. I wanted closeness but didn’t trust it. My body flinched before my mind could catch up. I learned to dissociate— to float above myself, to disappear without leaving a room. It was the only way I knew how to stay safe.

And yet my body also held the key to healing. It remembered the rupture, yes—but it also remembered the spark. The pulse. The instinct to survive. I began to listen. To move slowly, to breathe deeply. To create with my hands. Each gesture became a ritual. Each act of care, a rebellion against the silence.

Once I named it, it began to show up everywhere. In my relationships. In my body. In my art. I saw how often I apologized for existing. How often I shrank myself to make others comfortable. How often I mistook silence for safety.

But naming it also gave me a mirror. I started to see patterns. The way I over-explained. The way I braced for abandonment. I didn’t know how to feel safe, so I kept choosing danger as love. My creative process became the one place I didn’t have to pretend. I could be messy. I could be raw. I could be honest. I painted spirals that broke mid-turn. I stitch together torn fabric. I wrote poems that didn’t rhyme but bled. My art didn’t ask me to be healed. It asked me to be real.

And in that realness, I began to reclaim something. Not just my story, but my voice. My body. My boundaries. I started creating ritual objects—fragments of truth. Each one carried a piece of me. Each one said “This happened. And I’m still here.”

I didn’t need to be whole to be worthy. I didn’t need to be healed to be seen. I only needed to be honest. And that honesty became my compass.

I used to think healing meant becoming someone else. Someone untouched. Someone whole. But I’ve learned that healing isn’t erasure—it’s integration. It’s learning to live with truth without letting it speak for you.

I still carry the weight. Some days it’s lighter. Some days it’s unbearable. But I no longer carry it alone. I have my words. My rituals. My art. I have fragments I’ve stitched together into something that resembles a life. Not perfect. Not painless. But mine.

This chapter is not a conclusion. It’s a beginning, a reckoning. A declaration that I am not what was done to me. I am the one who lived. The one who speaks. The one who creates beauty from brokenness.

And if you're reading this—if you ever felt the world chose the monster over you— know this: You are not alone. Your story matters. Your voice matters. And there is power in naming what others try to bury.