No One is Coming to Save You

This is a photo of my 18th birthday party.

Underneath the glowing smile, I carried immense amounts of pain and shame. Surrounded by love, inside I was drowning in sorrow, in despair. By 18 I’d come to know loneliness, trauma, and abandonment intimately, and self-loathing was my only friend. I was never enough, it seemed, for anyone. Between attempting to gain my father’s affection through jumping through hoops of stellar academic performance to prove my worth while also attempting to survive my mother’s unleashing of her own wrathful trauma unto me, I felt completely alone. Constantly ruled by the psychological programming my parents placed inside my mind, disappointment, doubt, and worthlessness guided me through life and subsequently, through each fork in the road.

Never having the chance to feel safe, to feel cared about, to even feel at peace in body, mind, and spirit emotionally stunted me. I spent years & years looking for something, someone to fill this desolate vastness inside. Booze and weed and attention were only a bandaid for a bullet wound. Would anyone, anything in the form of relief ever come?

Years passed before I realized it was me who needed to do the work, me who needed to show up. Was it fair? No. I resented that I had to do the work of undoing when it was others that had traumatized me, cruelly pulverized me into naught but a ghost of my true glory. Though after many years I understood: no one was coming to save me except for maybe me. I was my only hope.

Today I am steeped in awareness, doing the work of healing & growing by the day. Processing, releasing, & accepting have become my friends instead of the cruel self-loathing. It isn’t that I don’t have triggers anymore, because I do. The difference is that now I can tell myself that the inner critic, the one scrutinizing every thought and feeling I have and second guesses every decision I make is not who I am, it’s residual trauma; a program that my mind runs when it’s uncomfortable or seeking attention. Awareness of these triggers enables me to truly begin living again.

There will always be work to be done, always darkness in which to shine our lights. Denial does us no favors. Truth is where you find pain, but it’s also the same space in which we find our ultimate peace. I look at this 18-year-old girl now & I love her, as she should have been loved all those years ago. I forgive her & the versions of myself past who did whatever she could to pacify her pain, to survive, even when it was to the detriment of others. I’m grateful that I’m still here, grateful for the opportunity to become the person I’ve always dreamed of.

How exhilarating it is to know that we can wake up each day & choose to experience a whole new version of ourselves, again & again & again?