I don’t hate you because you didn’t love me. What I hate more is that I had to work to become someone you could love. I hate that I had to earn it, and I think a part of me will forever resent you for that.
That’s why my guard will always be up with you. That’s why there will always be a distance I refuse to close.
Because before I grew up, when I was at my most innocent, when I was still childlike and had no understanding of what any of it would eventually do to me, you made me feel worthless.
And I still suffer because of it.
Because it was feeling worthless that taught me to hate myself. It was feeling worthless that made it so difficult for me to see any value in myself. It was feeling worthless that made me throw myself at the wrong people, desperately searching for something I had been starved of for so long, and some of them almost bled me dry.
All because you simply couldn’t love me.
And somehow, worse than that, you couldn’t even pretend to.
Maybe that’s part of why motherhood terrifies me. Because what if I do the same thing? What if I become you too? What if I have a daughter and ruin something inside her without ever meaning to? What if I am just as careless with her heart, never even realising that the childhood I give her will become the foundation upon which she builds the rest of her life?
Because that’s what mine became.
I feel awful sometimes. I wish I could change so much about myself. I wish I didn’t feel this way. I wish the thought of living a long, fulfilled life filled me with excitement instead of something closer to disbelief. Somewhere inside me, I don’t think I believe that kind of life will happen for me. Maybe some part of me still believes I don’t deserve it. I wouldn’t even dare ask for it. I’ll hope for it against my better judgement, of course, because hope has always had an irritating way of surviving in me. But things like that sometimes feel as though they simply aren’t written in my naseeb.
And I hate that.
I hate that I grew up believing I wasn’t good enough when I was nothing more or less than exactly who I was. A child.
You starved me of love.
And it’s not that I don’t love you. Oh, I really do. Maybe that’s what makes all of this harder. But these wounds are carved so deeply into me that I don’t know if I will ever completely forget where they came from.
I flinch at your love now. I flinch at your touch, even when there is nothing in it anymore but kindness. Even when you are trying to love me now.
Because where was it when I needed it?
Where was it when I was begging for it?
You were there. You were always there.
But somehow, I was invisible to you.
And now I would rather remain that way. I don’t want to be noticed. I want to walk quietly into my room, close the door behind me, and stay there for as long as I can. Because for so much of my life, that was the only way I knew how to find peace.
To take up as little space as possible.
To need nothing.
To ask for nothing.
To live as though I didn’t really exist.
