February 16 2024

I grew up in a 3 bedroom home with a total of six people. My parents were both unemployed and my brother and I shared the home with my grandmother and my uncle. The good thing was there was always someone home, the bad thing was that there was always someone home. There was no privacy in that house. Everyone knew what everyone was always doing. There was never enough space, to be alone or to keep things the way you want them. No boundaries for other peoples belongings, we shared everything, everything was a free for all. Nothing was ever just mine. I shared a bedroom with both my mother and my brother until I was in middle school. I fell asleep to sitcoms and woke up to the news. Then we put a twin bed in the (shared) computer room, I then fell asleep to clicks of the computer mouse as my grandmother played solitaire before she went to bed. I learned to sleep through the noise of the vacuum cleaner and the dishes being put away. My family was loud, they said what was on their minds even if they didn’t mean it. There was no awkward silence at the dinner table, hardly even between bites. We turned the TV off only during dinner, unless Wheel of Fortune was on. It may sound stressful but this is what was normal and comfortable for me. My only escape was the bathroom. We had two in the house but only one of them had a lock, forcing someone to knock if they couldn’t just barge in.

I spent years curled up fully clothed in that empty bathtub. Reading a book or day dreaming while my brain created little images in the patterns of the ceiling. It was the only place I could find solace. I dreamt of living alone. In a place that was quiet, I’d have a dog and a yard and no TV. A place that was mine, a place where I could leave more than two pairs of shoes by the front door or where I could leave my homework out without it getting confused for trash. I wanted to be alone, and I couldn’t wait. My grandparents bought this house in the fifties, they raised my dad and his siblings in it, and now it’s where they were raising me. My grandpa died when my dad was only 17. They would laugh about how sometimes he would lock himself in this same bathroom to chain smoke and blow the smoke out the window, just for a moment of peace with six kids running around outside. When I was 16 I found a cigarette and smoked it for the first time in that same bathroom. I thought about him, about how he had been thinking about wanting to be alone the same way I was. Although I bet he was sitting on the counter, or standing, unlike me, curled in an empty bathtub.

As I got older those parts have refused to leave me. I can’t sleep as well in stillness or when I’m alone. I can’t read as comfortably in silence as I can sitting at a crowded and noisy bar. I got what I wanted, I’m alone but I’m learning I never liked odd numbers. I’m left aching for the chaos that I was so used to. For years I have supplemented that ache with romantic relationships. One after another. Once I entered my early 20’s I dated men who were emotionally unavailable, needed to be taken care of, were on probation, were addicted to something, were manipulative and narcissistic. People just like my dad. As many red flags that I saw I chose to look past them. I made excuses that I knew were not valid. I thought if this person didn’t treat me as poorly as the last, I was doing better. I took any love I could get without listening to how I really wanted to be loved. My inability to be alone put me in a lot of relationships that instead of healing me, caused more damage. Even if those men weren’t all bad, or they didn’t mean it, they weren’t healthy for me. I thought if I just loved someone enough, if I just tried hard enough, they would need me enough that they would never want to leave me. It makes me feel sad for these past versions of myself. I thought if I did this I would never have to look myself in the eye and deal with the parts of me and my life that I didn’t want to think about. I used these other people as an excuse to avoid looking at myself. I was always taught to treat people the way you wanted to be treated. I was never taught to be that person to myself.

Healing trauma is a lot like tending to a garden. I’m sure this has been said by a million people in a million different ways, but the whole point of this is a reminder to myself. So here is what my garden feels like to me. No matter which beautiful parts you get to choose to add to your little plot of dirt, weeds will still find a way to sneak themselves in. No matter how much care you give something that you’ve planted, it doesn’t guarantee that it will grow just the way you want it to. Healing your trauma is like weeding, we use so many things to cut down the unsightly parts but we leave those roots deep down in there, because ripping them out completely…that takes real work and a lot of time and patience. That’s when our healing becomes exhausting, labor intensive work. Some of those roots are shallow, while some roots aren’t even from this season, some of them weren’t ours to begin with. Some of those roots were passed down from our parents, the people we love, because they didn’t take the time to tend to them when they were shallow so they grew into ours. Now they’re deep, so deep it’s as if they’re intertwined through our veins.

I want to so badly be an advocate of healing trauma. I want to be someone who openly talks about how difficult it is but how rewarding the hard work will be. I want to be vulnerable and clear. I want to help other people not feel so alone. I want to be someone I needed when I was younger, and sometimes still need now. I want to be there, on the other side of all of this, to let people know it’s possible. I’m not there, I’m so in the thick of my own healing that sometimes I don’t believe myself when I say it will get better. Those invasive thoughts creep back in whenever they have a chance. Those are the roots I haven’t pulled yet.

It’s difficult to be honest with ourselves, especially when we’re hurting. When we’re hurting we want anything that will quickly take that feeling away. To dull the ache, to forget there is a root. Sitting with my emotions this last month has been a whirlwind. I have never felt so unlike myself. Forced to feel the weight and entanglement of those emotions rooted in the bottom of my lungs, preventing them from fully doing their job. My jaw bones have become sore from clenching them shut to prevent an escape of words that feel impossible to say out loud. I feel the ache creep from the pit of my stomach, flood my lungs, and lock my jaw. Have you ever had that? A sentence that feels so painful to say out loud that your body physically prevents you from saying it? That’s them, those are the roots, clinging on for dear life. As soon as you rip those to the surface, there they are, they can’t go back, you have to see them, you have to feel them, you have to acknowledge them for exactly what they are to prevent them from coming back. That’s what self love is supposed to heal.

I’m learning to tend to these difficult moments. Cleaning out the roots. As I’ve gotten older love in so many forms has helped me heal a lot of those parts. I’m learning as you grow older, the list of people who are reliable and trustworthy can dwindle. People grow up, get married, move away, and create their own lives. As happy as I am for those people, I don’t always fit in their lives the same way I used to. It’s so important to find that balance of being vulnerable with others while still being that source of dependability for yourself. I’m trying to take care of myself in the moment, to sooth myself and flush the wounds.

I am so lucky to be loved. I have a group of people who help me set the bar higher and higher for the love I deserve to give and allow myself. To give me the space to be myself through all of life's phases. Yet to utter the words to anyone that I’m sad, I feel insignificant, and I miss my parents cannot be said out loud without a full on meltdown. That the ache that I’m feeling is not for chaos, it’s the need to fill the absence of what I’ve lost with the only thing I’m familiar with. To fill the want of picking up the phone to call my parents, to tell them my heart has broken for the 100th time and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to be the same again. For them to tell me that things will work out, and I’ll believe them because I know that as many people that come and go in my life they love and support me the most. I want to go home and watch Wheel of Fortune with Grams and be annoyed with my mom talking over Pat Sajak while my dad makes spaghetti because it’s the only meal he’s good at. It’s painful to sit and yearn for something that doesn’t exist, and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. I’m learning that I can’t fill that void with just anything if I truly want it to heal. I have to build a home within myself before I can trust myself to let other people build with me. I know that all of this digging and ripping up of the roots is what I need to be doing, I know it’s the only way to clean up my garden to make room for new things to bloom. I know I’m on the edge of something, I just don’t know what it is yet. I hope someday I can look back at these years of my metamorphosis. That I can be unrecognizable again to my past self, in a way that I’m proud of. So if you’re someone who has been around these last few years when I have been most unlike myself, thank you. Thank you for being patient, for being kind, and loving me. Helping me set higher standards for my life. Rewiring our brains to accept ourselves and the love we really deserve is complicated, and as far behind as I feel in life sometimes, I would still be afraid to move past the starting line without you.