Shame is lodged under my fingernails like soil. I’m not going to lie, on some days I refuse to remember my past. But the more I run away and the more I hide it deep inside my skin – the more it grows and expands, the more it screams back at me wanting to be heard.
I dragged my past behind me like a heavy bag of belongings, as if it was needed in some way upon my arrival. It is mostly dark and at times blurred for I chose to disregard a lot of it. Other times, I removed myself into a made-up world to seek some consolation, to survive.
I look back with apprehension. Perhaps I am frightened at the dark parts of me that I hid in an attempt to fit into my parents’ idea of their daughter: settled and immaculate. But I was more. In me there was a fighter, in search for meaning and truth. I would not settle for the bourgeois world.
Not long ago, I finally met the little girl that I harboured inside me. Her hands are eager but sturdy, strengthened by the hurt she’s had to carry. Her eyes glisten with resilience, reflecting so much light from within. I told her in a trembling voice I love you, I’m here. I discarded the past I carried with me for so long and understood it is merely a scar, a tiny blemish that proves that even from darkness beauty can blossom, just like the lotus thrives from the muddiest waters.
I only look back to learn from the choices that almost got me lost. I look back because I want to acknowledge it all, I want to know every memory that caused me pain, every mouth that spat its dissatisfaction, every hand that tried to grab unto my body with lust, every man that used love as a facade for greed, every friend that betrayed, every teacher that misled. I want to forgive.
Sometimes shame burdens me as I wish I could go back and tell the little girl that she is all that matters. Tell her to feel through the grief, to sit with the discomfort and let it pass. To listen to her inner voice that always guided her, to the small god planted inside her soul like a seed that grows and blooms year by year. I wish I could go and love her to her healing.
But shame dissolves once it is accepted. I am here, right now. And each day erupts with miracles and possibility. My pain was not a liability, but a gift that brought me here with a heart full of love.
Fears kept hidden only grow more fierce and keeping our pain a secret will imprison us into the hurt. I refuse to hide anymore and so I allow myself to become an offering to the world: imperfect, human but always whole.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
― Marianne Williamson
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