Amongst my peers, I was the quiet kid. I didn’t voice my opinion nor my feelings as often as I should have.
Often times children who grow up not voicing their opinions about themselves or others are an indication that there is a deeper problem at bay. While I am not a psychologist regaining my voice back took a number of years but it started with me documenting my depression at 17. I thought I would publish the two-year-long depression and existential crisis I was in. It turns out it would not make for a good novel. It's when I decided to embark on my very own journey.
I found my passion for writing and storytelling felt natural to me and soon I considered it a career because of how effortless it was for me. I didn’t express how I felt often but writing felt like a safe haven for me. Soon I realized the very realistic aspects of pursuing writing as a full-time job. I came to realize that maybe monetizing my writing was not the most important to me because what I didn’t expect was writing to become healing for me. I found a sense of fulfillment in healing, in writing; that made me question what I really truly wanted to write about.
Writing was incredibly healing to me but I found that the true healing started when I completed my first poetry collection. Writing about my trauma whether it be through poetry or just through essay writing provide me an outlet to breathe, to deeply understand my psyche and I was then able to understand my feelings and rationalize them.
While therapy is great and fundamental to me it provided coping mechanisms to heal. When I wrote it felt the closest thing to alchemy I could get. It was groundbreaking for me to use my pain and put it into art.
To me it was alchemy.
To me this is freedom.
I decided to publish not to monetize my work but out of necessity to gain my voice back. It was a public grieving that I was not ashamed about it. It felt like I had these secrets for so long but they weren’t secrets they were deep hurt from years of being abused and groomed.
I did not want to be seen as a martyr but as a survivor of trauma. Writing set me free when I felt locked and paralyzed by trauma. When I was told to be quiet about what happened to me. Nothing was more epic and loud and rebellious to oust what happened to me. Because the truth is publishing my healing journey was truly just ousting my very own feelings.
I know many people have faced the fear of saying the name of the person that abused them and rightfully so. As many times when victims speak up about what happened to them, the perpetrator will often come after them with violence. I just don’t care anymore. I am no longer afraid because I no longer have to carry this pain with me.
I no longer have to, I no longer want to. So I give it up.
My healing is my concern. The truth is my concern because what happened to me is a tale as old as time. The women before me have told me this one long ago growing up I just never thought it would happen to me until it did.
I thought I would never be free from the hurt and pain. I felt imprisoned for so long and then I wrote.
