Reliving the Nightmare

 In some strange way, I feel as though I am reliving my childhood nightmare.

Once again, I find myself tiptoeing around fear and pain.

As a little girl, I learned that expressing my feelings wasn’t safe. I swallowed my tears, my anger, my confusion, and my fear because there was no room for them. There was only room for being the good little girl.

Today, I notice something heartbreaking.

When I cry, my physical pain often becomes worse.

It feels as though my body is still carrying the same message it learned long ago—that my feelings are dangerous, that expressing them comes with consequences.

This is how I grew up.

Afraid.

Walking on eggshells.

Trying so hard to do everything right.

Trying to be good enough.

Trying to earn love, acceptance, and safety.

Yet somehow, no matter how hard I tried, I was left feeling ashamed. Guilty. As though I was always disappointing someone. As though I was somehow getting life wrong.

That old feeling still visits me.

Now, instead of trying to fix a family that could never give me what I needed, I find myself trying to fix a body that won’t cooperate.

I read.

I pray.

I rest.

I try new treatments.

I search for answers.

And when the pain refuses to let go, a familiar voice quietly whispers that I must have failed. That if I had only done something differently, somehow I would feel better.

I know that voice.

It isn’t really about today.

It is the echo of a little girl who believed that if she could only be better, quieter, smarter, kinder, or more lovable, everything around her would finally become safe.

She carried responsibilities that never belonged to a child.

Now I wonder if I have unknowingly handed those same impossible responsibilities to the woman I have become.

Part of me feels as though I have failed both of us—the little girl who needed protection and the woman who carried dreams for a different life.

But perhaps that, too, is an old story.

Maybe neither of us failed.

Maybe we have simply been carrying burdens that were never ours to carry.

And maybe the bravest thing either of us has ever done is to keep hoping, even while walking through the fear.