Once A Child

From the moment we open our eyes—crying in a cold, sterile hospital— the conditions of love begin to blossom. Living and growing in our mother’s bellies only holds a safe place for nearly a year before we were quite literally ejected into chaos we didn’t ask for. From that point on there are conditions to the amount of love and respect we receive. From birth when we are “good babies” in the nursery, the nurses praise us for our cooperation, whereas fussy babies, while still looked at as precious cute creations, are deemed more difficult. Though this example is rather vague and lacks depth into the true meaning of conditional love, it is a pivotal reminder of how we enter and leave this world. Alone.

Often, I wonder what would have happened if I had been handled with unconditional love from birth to now. While I know for certain many others had it worse than me, I had a childhood that I needed to heal from. Sometimes it is be hard to admit that I don't have anything of what society calls “normal”. I came from a broken home with a parent who truly couldn’t have raised me off of anything other than fear because that is what she was taught. Alternatively, I have an addict for a father who takes pride in being nothing more than the worthless creep he’s been since I was a little girl. Some things never change. Maybe they aren’t supposed to. I spent so much time craving this white picket fence that never saw the light of day.

I know now first-hand what being a single mother feels like which is where I try to show my mother grace. She did this all alone with family members who probably have made her feel the exact same way she has made me feel often over the years….like nothing. I know that it couldn’t have been easy on her because it damn sure wasn’t easy on me. I got tired of never being good enough inside or outside of my house. My self-esteem caved. I made poor choices and experimented with boys, even grown men, all in order to feel like at least someone loved me. At least, if only for a few minutes, someone pretended to care. Which is actually really sad now that I break this down, but reality isn’t always beautiful.

I remember being beaten so harshly for small mistakes that I stopped understanding the difference between love and fear. I became sneaky. The sneakiest I've ever been, which carried its own guilt as I was carefully constructed into the scape goat of a family I longed to feel a part of. The same hands that are connected to the ancestors that's skin were whipped from their back is the same hands that beat me for spending fifty cents. As a child, it confused me how it could be love or how it could "hurt" them more than it hurt me. As an adult I still don't understand.

For many years, I had believed that I deserved the treatment that I'd experienced as a child which led me into a deep depression in adulthood. What I discovered in adulthood is very interesting. People expect you to dismember the inner voice that was quite literally beaten into you. How can someone learn to love themselves or feel confidence in their decisions when they are either beaten or berated for making common childhood mistakes. We take those screams with us into adulthood, only they whisper in the back of our minds.

While I made the mistake of taking my very real trauma and turning it into a victim mindset, at the time, it was all I knew to do. It took so much work to find accountability in my adult decisions. I'd put myself in so many situations expecting someone to save me. What I can confidently say is that I have lacked community my entire life. That played a huge role as I grew into this bewilderment as an adult.

We all hurt. We are all healing. We all are the way we are because of how much love we did or didn't receive. We rarely pause to remember that beneath our scars, defenses, and mistakes—we were all once just children, needing love. Small, scared, and blindly loyal. That child still lives in each of us, quietly begging to be loved without conditions. Maybe healing starts when we stop blaming the child we were and start protecting them ourselves.

I may never get the love I should have had back then. I’m learning to give it to myself. Somehow, that feels like the beginning of a whole new world. After all, the child in me is still here. And finally, she’s being heard, by me. Who would have thought? Every person you meet carries a childhood you’ll never see. Some of us are still fighting battles that started before we could speak. Maybe the world would hurt less if we all remembered—we were all, once a child.