Day 288

Confession: I’m struggling to come up with a confession to pair with this childhood photo. I dont have many of them in my possession. I want to make this one count but I go blank and start crying.

(Lets pause together and relax our shoulders)

I wish I had more photos. There’s a closet—filled with albums—that I haven’t had access to in many years. I like to imagine there’s answers in there, answers to why everything went wrong.

It was constantly drilled into me how good my life was, and that I was born bent.

Except I was a child. And a child is never responsible for trauma. I know now that there is always someone out there who has it worse. A blind man can hear. A deaf man can run. Comparison isn’t erasure. Believing “I am bad” gave hope that if I changed, the abuse or chaos would stop.

That became my identity. And that’s why this photo makes me cry.

She wasn’t bad.

Sound of the day: Omni Gardens – Oolong https://youtu.be/Tio0g1pGz6U?si=t1OWltkZvZcsPvgo

(This song came on while I was writing this post and reminded me of something from my childhood)