My summer was a time of growth and reflection.
I expected my healing to be permanent when I was away at college. Coming back for summer didn’t sound too bad, I mean… he was no longer there. Turns out, it’s just not physically.
First day of summer after my sophomore year of college. After a year of tremendous healing, I’m coming back to the place that destroyed me. Looking into the kitchen where my mom’s ex (boyfriend at the time) would tell us how worthless we were. Or going to my bedroom where I had spent countless hours in that very spot, wondering if it was even worth living. Walking out the front door, where looking down at my legs put me in my sixteen-year-old body that was sneaking to my boyfriend’s house to have sex that I didn’t want. Or the bathroom where my eating disorder began. All of it.
All in this very house.
This is supposed to be my home, but “home” isn’t where you’ve been abused. Home is where you find yourself. Home is where you feel loved. Home is where you find space that’s yours.
After all that’s happened here… how the fuck do I do that?
The night I came home, I decided that I needed to reclaim this space. Dissociated from myself, I filled trash bags full of my past. Clothes, pictures, random objects that filled the closet behind closed doors– anything that reminded me of anyone who’d hurt me, anything that didn’t feel right, and anything that reminded me of who I once was.
I’ve lived two separate lives. I live two separate lives. We all grow when we get to college… and I sure as hell did. But two years later, I don’t know how to connect who I once was to who I am now. There’s something missing in between; must’ve been a bridge that has burned down.
Opening the door to “home” is opening the door to darkness. In the past two years, I’ve been able to escape from what’s hurt me… to escape from my past self. But every now and then I pay that part of me a visit.
To my past self,
There’s so much I wish I could tell you. He is not what he did to you. Purging is not where you should look for control. I wish I knew you. I wish I could hug you and lift you up to the parts of the world you haven’t yet seen.
I acknowledge that you once existed, but I must move on from you. I’m trying so hard not to forget about you. But it’s my only choice… I must let go. Some things you just have to leave behind. I must see the good that the world has to offer… that I have to offer. There’s no turning back.