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theory unsent letter

I was never young

Dear friend, I was never young.  In years, I was young; I was born as a baby and progressed as one does.  But I was never young in the sense of needs met, well-being protected, spirit cherished.

What’s innocence?  I definitely wasn’t guilty.  But life didn’t unfold in a stepwise way.  Choices were denied me, and I live with the consequences.

content warning: mention of sexual assault

The way I was violated as a young child taught me that I exist for the pleasure and service of men.  My home wasn’t a safe place to grow.  It was a twisted way of being.

After the early violations, I endured domestic violence, then neglect.  Then more violation from men outside my family.  During all of that, I had to figure out on my own how to function, with parts of me taken away from me.  I’m middle aged now, and you see me still waking up from that.

That’s what I meant when I told you, “You get to be old one day, but I’ll never be young.”  My youth was taken from me.  In a way I was asleep all my life, dozing in loss and sorrow, in a cocoon of denial.  I was stuck in survival mode because the world was never a safe place for me.

Even when I was safe literally, I wasn’t safe inside myself.  There’s a PTSD cliche of the soldier who never comes home from war.  It must be confusing to others who can’t see or hear the bombs going off.  If home isn’t safe, where do I live?

freedom

It’s unfair to wake up with my hair half-gray, suddenly learning the freedom I should have had from the beginning.  In some ways you’ve helped me learn the freedom, and I could never thank you enough.

Our trip to my homeland was healing, and the boundaries you keep show me how to have life-sustaining boundaries.  Thank you for helping me learn my self-worth as a bright example.  Thank you for helping me develop standards I should have had from the beginning.

I never had the choice of standards as a young child being violated.  Those choices were taken from me.  My own well-being was on the backburner.  Some things a child learns are with words, from songs, from books, and at school.  But the most basic lessons aren’t learned with words–they’re learned through what’s done to our bodies.  I learned in my body that I was worthless and exist to meet others’ needs.

mental illness

Then I’m blamed all my life for the ways I’m fucked up.  The basics of my functioning have been called bipolar I with psychotic features, schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, psychosis, anxiety.  My means of survival has been called people pleasing, codependency, weakness.

The blame feels cruel and comes from people who grew up white, abled, thin, with money, and with an ACE score of 2.  The burden of blame has always been on me.

The men who used a little child are not blamed.  They had no suffering from their behavior, besides the self-hate people who harm children must feel.  Those men are all dead now.  They died young, and it’s confusing how they occupied multiple roles in my life.  Much of my genetics comes from them.  My smile, my hair, my stomach issues, and other health issues come from the people who never should have been near my smile, right?

alone

Of course I’m glad that most people weren’t abused to the extent that I was.  But it’s very lonely to live as a person who was never young.  I’m different in that I’m fat, crazy, autistic, demisexual, very religious, hear voices, and feel my feelings at 10/10.  But the difference that hurts the most is invisible or stuck to me like a shadow.

Violation is physical but the damage is mostly energetic.  I deserved my body and life protected, and I deserved my spirit protected.  It’s like my spirit got riddled with holes so I’ve lived most of my life feeding and feeding myself in an attempt to replenish what’s leaking out.  I was a leaky bucket.  My teenage years of music on repeat, garlic bread, masturbation, the same movie over and over again, and talking to the birds in the backyard could only do so much.  Still I was starving.

Then the decade I spent at the ashram enjoying the quiet of meditation and beauty of ritual–that’s a way I could keep my bucket full.  Flowers, chanting in Sanskrit, incense, and the straightforward predictability-container of worship replenished me by fulling my senses with color, sound, and light.

I lived close to God.  My identity and pain weren’t important there.  I could hand over my life to something greater in a way that didn’t result in my demise.

friendship

Thank you for going to a puja with me and seeing what the ritual is like.  I’m glad you don’t need that.  I’m so glad you’re a functional, bright, brave pumpkin who isn’t starving.  You know yourself and aren’t begging everywhere to be fed.

In friendship with you, I find rest.

Thank you for letting me explain how I was never young.  Beauty and pleasure nourish me.  I’m grateful for the cake we baked the other day which gave me a new taste I never tasted before.  I’m a slut for cake, and we don’t need a reason for that.  But maybe now you understand more.

I love you,

Nest

By Nest

Curious, disabled Earth Goddess, telling the truth.

2 replies on “I was never young”

Loved the way you connected the distant past through the near past and into the present.

It all happens, good or ill, and I don’t have the words right now to describe the whys. But thanks for your words that did say something here.

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