Angry
I am angry.
I am angry that I have spent so much of my life feeling emotionally unsafe. I am angry that being disregarded became normal to me. I am angry that I learned to minimise myself because my feelings were inconvenient to other people.
Sometimes I feel fundamentally less than other people because of the family I come from.
There. I said it.
I feel ashamed when people talk about family. I feel ashamed when people speak about support systems, home, closeness, and safety because I do not know how to relate to it without feeling grief.
I feel like I came from emotional rubble, and I have spent years trying to arrange the broken pieces into something presentable so nobody notices.
The worst part is that I know this shame leaks into everything.
Into love. Into friendship. Into how I see myself. In the way, I assume I have to earn softness from people.
I know people say “change the story.”
What if I am still mourning the fact that this was the story at all?
What if I am tired of being strong about it? What if I do not want to positively think my way around pain today? What if I just want someone to admit that some things damage you deeply?
I do not want to stay here forever.
Today I need to tell the truth.
I am grieving the mother I needed. I am grieving the version of me that never got to feel fully safe. I am grieving how much of my life has been spent trying to become lovable to people who should have loved me already.