i want to be shared with the world.

I look around my room before I leave. I scan it to make sure the wires are in their right places, but I can’t help but notice the dreams that surface before the gaze: these walls are cemented in visions instead of whatever keeps them intact.

leaving, I realise they’re not only dreams. they’re painful moments, too. I hear the screams these walls have heard, the walls that witnessed me falling to the ground as I was being beaten, my belongings crashing into a million pieces and my pillow soaked in hours-long streams of tears. this blanket has touched my chest pent up with a longing dimmed with hopelessness. my carpets have been dusted with the debris of all my unsettled anxieties of never knowing how to move on with my life.

my body often stops itself from seeing home. it’s almost an out-of-body experience to be living here. I step outside of myself into denial and numbness to be able to forget what this home was built by— and when denial gets too close to bursting into deep, inscrutable suffering, that’s when you know there’s something to be dealt with.

I feel more disconnected the more I try to forgive it. the more I move on, the more this little voice in me wants to scream out loud and demand to be heard and seen. this inner child in me doesn’t have so many opportunities to be seen— it was all about him, being obedient, following the rules, polishing and sugarcoating life not to disturb the peace. it was all about finding a way through the labyrinth of immaturity, unmet needs and never about this little, abandoned child in me.

and God, I want to share myself with the world. I want to leave this home. I have felt the beautiful sweetness of looking into people's eyes and sharing our experiences in one heart, somehow seeing it through. I want to share my dreams with the world. I want to feel joy. I want to sing, dance and laugh. I want to be free at last.

but when I come home each day, I switch myself off. I don’t know how that happens but it does. I grind in front of my screen and forget everything. I keep forgiving what has been just to harmonise what was never cleared in the air. I want to cut these cords but there’s a part in me that hasn’t allowed it. my inner child is not ready to forgive.

my inner child does not forgive this home. she doesn’t forgive what hasn’t been resolved. she doesn’t forgive that she was never told an apology. she doesn’t forgive that she was not allowed to feel anything here. you can forgive all you like, but she doesn’t. she can’t forget it. she won’t forget it until she knows deeply that moving on won’t hurt her. she won’t forget it until she trusts you enough to make the right choices.

that’s why I have to remember so much of my past to be able to live well. I have to remember what I’ve been through to make the right choices. I can’t forget it because if I do, I’ll just be like it always was. I’ll lapse into the unconscious darkness of hurt and joylessness. 

my inner child wants me to make the right choices for her. she wants me to share her with the world. she doesn’t want to be between those terrifying walls. she wants to know it’s safe to be free, to touch the sun and the ripples on the streams.

my inner child wants me to allow her what she has always dreamed of— to feel at home. she asks me each day to allow her freedom. she clings to me, telling me to do whatever it takes to move forward. to create differently. to choose a life beyond this terror, those muffled tears, those years spent waiting for a ray of hope.

to choose love, i need to see her closely. to choose love, i need to dig my hands in the mud where she has been buried. and often i find her crying, in grief of being lost inside of me. she cries out wanting my attention, all the things she was never confronted with. she holds me hand tightly and asks me to ask her about her stories before moving on with mine.

I want to be shared with the world, she tells me. I want to live the days I never lived. I keep going about with the love in my life like she was never there... when it is all for her. I forget to tell her that all of this, all of these dreams, they're just for her. 

and now I know what it means to serve the world through serving myself.