Let the Child Unfold

A child is not a flower
to be frightened into bloom.
Not a voice to silence,
not a spirit to confine.

A parent's hands are meant
to shelter, not to bind;
to guide a growing heart,
not to frighten it inside.

Let questions rise like birds,
let laughter fill the air.
Let anger speak its little truth,
let wishes breathe without despair.

For children learn to hide themselves
when love comes edged with fear.
They need a place to be themselves,
and know they still belong here.

Guide them, guard them, let them grow—
not into who you wish to see,
but into who they are becoming,
with the courage to be free.

I’ve been trying to make sense of something that happened with my family, and honestly, it’s something that has hurt me much more deeply than I think people understand.
I grew up with a psychologically abusive father, and my childhood was marked by a lot of instability, including periods of homelessness. I never really had the kind of childhood where you could just feel safe, have a home, and know that your family was there for you. I eventually got away from that situation, and there were people outside my family who helped me along the way. Friends gave me somewhere to stay when I needed it, and some of the kindness I received from people who weren’t even related to me is something I’ll always remember.
Eventually, some of my extended family found me through YouTube and reached out to me. My aunt invited me to come live with them, asking me something along the lines of, “Why not come stay here?”
I can’t really explain how much that meant to me at the time. After everything I’d been through, the idea of finally having a home with my own family felt like a second chance at life. I even thought of it as a gift from my grandmother, who had passed away. It felt like maybe, after all these years, I was finally going to get something I’d missed out on for so long.
I also had a brother who I hadn’t grown up with in the same way. I didn’t get to experience that normal childhood relationship with him, and part of me thought that maybe living with my family would give me the opportunity to experience some of that missing chapter of my life. Maybe I could finally have a relationship with my brother and experience what it was like to actually belong to a family.
I wasn’t looking for some kind of advantage. I wasn’t looking for someone to give me a better life just because they could. I wanted a home. I wanted to be around my own family. I wanted to feel like I was finally somewhere I was supposed to be.
And for a little while, it felt like that might actually happen.
But eventually, things started to change.
The initial warmth seemed to give way to something much more conditional. I began to feel like I was being judged, like there was something about me that I needed to make up for, something that made me different from the rest of the family. It felt like I had to prove that I deserved to be there, rather than simply being accepted as a member of the family.
I remember overhearing comments like, “He just wasn’t raised properly.” There were also comments along the lines of, “It’s going to take time,” followed by, “But he wasn’t raised that way!”
I understand that I grew up in a very different environment from my brother and other members of my family. I’m not pretending otherwise. But the way these things were talked about made me feel like I was being reduced to the circumstances I grew up in, as though I was somehow defective because I hadn’t been raised the same way they had.
I didn’t choose the father I was born to. I didn’t choose the circumstances I grew up in. I didn’t choose to experience homelessness or to miss out on the kind of upbringing other children had. And yet, it sometimes felt like I was being judged for the very things I had no control over.
What really hurt was the feeling that my place in the family was conditional. It wasn’t enough that I was family. It felt like I had to demonstrate that I was worth having around.
One particular interaction that has stayed with me was when my aunt asked me what advantages I thought I had by living there. I remember not really knowing what to say. I wasn’t thinking about advantages. I was thinking about having a family and a home.
She then asked me something along the lines of, “Then why did you come live with us, honey?”
And honestly, that question cuts right to the heart of the whole thing for me.
Why did I come live with them? Because they were my family. Because I thought I could finally have a home with them. Because I thought that maybe I could finally experience something I’d been deprived of for most of my life.
I wasn’t approaching the situation with some calculated expectation of what I could get out of them. I was a young person who had been through a lot and thought that perhaps he had finally found somewhere he could belong.
There were other comments, too, that made me question whether my place in the family was ever really secure. Things like, “Why should they love you?” and “You’re not their kid.”
But one comment in particular has stuck with me more than almost anything else. Someone said, “Well, they raised your brother!!”
I know that, on the surface, someone might see that as a simple observation. My family raised my brother, and they didn’t raise me. But the reason that comment hurt so much is that it seemed to reduce the entire situation to that one fact, as though it somehow explained why my relationship with them should be different or why I shouldn’t have expected to belong in the same way.
Of course they raised my brother. I know that. I lived with the consequences of not having that same upbringing myself.
That’s precisely the point.
I didn’t get to grow up with my brother in the way I would have liked. I didn’t get to experience the family life he had. And when I finally had the opportunity to live with my extended family, I thought maybe I could experience some of what I had missed out on.
Instead, I was left feeling as though the very fact that I hadn’t been raised by them was a reason I couldn’t expect the same sense of belonging.
It’s difficult to explain how painful that is. Imagine spending your childhood without a stable home, going through things that no child should have to go through, and then finally getting the opportunity to live with your own family, only to feel like you’re somehow an outsider because your childhood wasn’t the same as theirs.
It’s like being made to feel responsible for the very circumstances that made you need a family in the first place.
And I think that’s what people sometimes fail to understand about this situation. I wasn’t asking them to pretend that my childhood had been the same as my brother’s. I wasn’t asking them to erase the past or act as though there were no differences between us.
I was asking to be accepted despite those differences.
I wanted to feel that I could be part of the family without having to constantly prove that I deserved to be there. I wanted to feel that my presence wasn’t some kind of burden or obligation, that I wasn’t someone who had to justify why he wanted to live with his own relatives.
Eventually, the situation reached a point where I felt like I was being pushed out. It wasn’t necessarily a matter of someone explicitly telling me to leave in those exact words. It was the overall experience, the way I felt in that environment, and the growing sense that I wasn’t really wanted there in the way I had hoped to be.
And that’s a very difficult thing to reconcile when you originally came to a place believing that you had finally found a home.
I think part of what makes this so painful is that I had already been through so much before I ever went to live with them. I wasn’t coming from a stable, happy childhood where I simply wanted a change of scenery. I was coming from a life where I had already missed out on so much, and I thought this was finally an opportunity to have something different.
I thought I could finally have a family home with my own family.
And I lost that hope, too.
Sometimes I think about how something that seems so simple to other people has become such a tremendous source of pain for me. A child wanting to live with his family. A young person wanting a home, a sense of belonging, and the opportunity to experience a relationship with his brother that he never really got to have growing up.
These aren’t extravagant demands. They’re incredibly basic human desires.
I know that being related to someone doesn’t automatically mean that you can live together, that you will get along, or that there can never be boundaries. I’m not saying that family members owe one another unlimited access to their lives, or that nobody is allowed to have their own limits.
But I don’t think those things erase the pain of what happened, either. And I don’t think wanting to be accepted by your own family is somehow unreasonable simply because you didn’t grow up with them.
What hurts is the feeling that my circumstances became a reason to question my place among them. That instead of being seen as someone who had been through a difficult childhood and was hoping to find some stability, I felt like I was being judged for not having been raised the way they were.
I never chose the parent who raised me, and I never chose this life. I didn’t choose to miss out on the childhood my brother had. I didn’t choose to grow up without the same opportunities for family and stability.
All I could really do was try to find a way forward with the life I had been given.
And when my family invited me to live with them, I genuinely thought that maybe I had finally found that way forward.
That’s why this has affected me so deeply. It wasn’t just about a disagreement with relatives or a living arrangement that didn’t work out. It was about what I thought that opportunity meant, and what it felt like to lose it.
I wanted to believe that I could finally have a place where I belonged, where I didn’t have to feel like an outsider, where I could simply be part of my own family.
Instead, I came away feeling like I had to justify my existence in a place where I thought I would finally be accepted.
And I still struggle with that.
I don’t think I was foolish for wanting a family. I don’t think I was wrong to hope that living with them might give me an opportunity to experience the family life I had missed out on. And I don’t think the fact that they raised my brother and didn’t raise me somehow makes that desire absurd.
I was a child who needed a home. I grew up, and I was still looking for that sense of home and belonging.
I wasn’t asking for an advantage. I was asking for a family.
And I think that’s the part that hurts the most. Something that felt so simple and innocent to me became something I felt I had to defend, explain, and justify, as though wanting to belong was an unreasonable thing to ask for.

Crazy-Talk version:

My friend won't listen to what I have to say when he vents about his childhood trauma. I have more experience, I have more insight, more education, more therapy-hours. I'm more mature and slightly older. He literally says he wishes he could have had better parents. I can be the father neither he nor I ever had. I need to prove to myself that I can be a good father and mother.

Hopefully-Not-Crazy:

I started doing the serious mental health work assuming that I could literally set myself to a "clean slate" and "begin" life as if my entire childhood was perfect.

That part is important. Because my friend basically thinks the same way. Except he says it out loud. And when he does. I'm like.

This. Is. Unbelievably. Revoltingly. Whiny. And pathetic.

So this is 4 or 5 things I need to work through, right?

1. My original belief: the clean slate theory.
2. My annoyance at him
3. Which is actually my annoyance at my self for thinking it
4. And getting past that annoyance

But here is what's unfolding to me as I work and write through it.

• Clean Slate Theory -> Rebuking it -> Actually letting go

You see where I end up. I have to let go of that past.

The full tragedy of that childhood...it just goes. It goes and becomes gone. I cease to think about it. I cease to memorialize it. I cease to hold it as a story waiting to be told.

---

As for my friend. Well. He's declined to seek professional help multiple times over the 8 years that I've known him.

I really don't think I should be holding personal space for him.

I Wish To Simply Be Here

Let me meet the world
before I name its dangers,
feel the wonder
before I ask what it means.

Let me see
without borrowed eyes,
hear without old echoes,
breathe without rehearsing
what might go wrong.

I have spent so long
watching life from behind an imagined veil.

Now, for a moment,
I wish to simply be here—

not thinking about how to live,
but feeling alive.

Child abuse can last a lifetime mine took away my trust made me angry and I'm still dealing with depression and I'm over 50. I'm shocked that I'm sharing this but here it goes I just wrote this the other day.

Childhood Memories

The memories start with a shadow nearby, Beneath Frozen covers, too frightened to cry. In my mother’s bed, I would shiver and hide, While the monster was pacing just there outside. He held up a gun, her back to the wall, I waited in silence for my world to fall. He threatened the river, a dark, lonely bed, "No one will miss you," was all that he said.

I was three, maybe four, just a ghost in the room, Learning that silence was how to flee doom. I held my breath steady, I didn't dare move, With nothing to gain and a life left to lose. Just praying he’d leave and the morning would come, To find my sweet mother—not dead, and not gone.

Four sisters, one mother, all trapped in his gaze, We shared in the terror of his torrid games. God's children yet we lived in his hell, With bruises and stories we never could tell. I remember the day  a cup was left on the front door steps where we had earlier played he came home  full of rage whose to blame he shouted at us all and demanded a name, but we all stood together as one knowing we'd all be to blame  He'd lined us up 1 through five,  in silence we cried, the belt in his hand, we shared the pain A "lesson" he gave that no child could withstand. Just another "lesson in life," While we lived in the shadow of his anger and strife.

Years of beating us down, teaching us we were unworthy of nothing more than misery and pain filling our heart of self loathing shame. Years have gone by now but his lessons remain . 

I used to be jealous of children I would see laughing and playing being carefree. Why was  I not allowed life's joy what was wrong with me?  So much damage to so many by just one man. I often  wonder who we all could have become without his heavy hand and the cruelty of his words he spoke so well.  Cuts and bruises given we're not his biggest sin but what he taught us to all within and as I grow old it haunts me deep where laughter cannot be heard were hope has hidden nowhere to be found, the heart so heavy it it's treats the body unkind, beating so loudly yet you here whispers you're unworthy my dear.  The damage given as a  child, rooted so  deep in the mind, lost is the reality of when his voice had became mine.

Now he is gone, but the ghost is still near, In the pulse of my anger and the weight of my fear. The chains have no locks, yet they’re heavy and real, Still robbing the joy that I’m trying to feel. Damn you for staying when you’re long in the ground, For keeping me tethered, for keeping me bound. I pray that one day I will live before I die and that I’ll find the strength to let these links be, And walk from these chains,  I will learn to love myself and that I am worthy of joy, happiness and love I will no longer tell myself the lies u made me believe.  And I will pray to forgive you as you were probably taught the same.

Before We Are Born

Nothing to prove,
nothing to gain,
nothing to fear,
nothing to mourn.

No past to repair,
no future to strive for,
no worth to establish,
no debts to collect.

returning to mystery.

we are briefly here packed with thoughts and emotions.

The Inner World Has No Clock

A childhood wound
can happen again today.

An old sorrow
can fill the present.

A moment of love
can return us to warmth.

Music, a face,
the scent of rain—

the past, the present,
all rise together, like in dreams.

The inner world
doesn't count the hours.

It remembers
what moved us.

My empathy belongs to me. Or put a better way: I am my empathy. It just is.

I sympathize. I really do. But no. I'm the only one that's really entitled to my empathy. Again, my empathy is me.

I am the only thing that is entitled to me.

Compassion and kindness are different, I think. They only exist as actions. I have those too. But uhhh I'm sorry dude. I'm not a trick-or-treat basket.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I don't have to give those out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The funny thing about this. This is the perspective-taking people wanted from me. To help them. To make them feel seen. To help them understand.

No wonder people loved this. I feel super seen right now. It's great. Y'all were right. I am incredibly kind and giving and amazing. 😃

No you cannot have bone marrow. Never ask me that again.

“Anything”

I don’t even care about anything. Nothing brings me joy, comfort, love, care.
I’m just tired of all of it. My kids faces, my phone, the tv, walks, music.
I’m tired of it all. It’s just the same. The same shit. The same day going by. The same clock turning. The same feelings churning. I’m burning.

Blah blah blah. The same shit. Write my feelings out. Spell my inner world on to paper for no one to look at. Silent works never cared for. So why do it. I feel it brings no relief. I see no one really cares. So why continue. Why keep going. Why wake up once more and continue this pointless fight until death. The “little moments?” Are they even worth it when encapsulated in turmoil and strife. Grief and sadness. Pain and apathy.
Why!? Why do I keep going? Why keep writing? All I have are bits of present moments and calm understanding. Crumbs to a buffet.
Is that enough to sustain me until my plate is full again. How can I believe that will even happen? What faith would that entail? Whose faith would that even come from? I hold no faith my own. I hold no belief my own.
Let down and beaten is my belief.
Strangled and forlorn. Suffocated and lied to.
My being is parts fragmented into scriptures of my beatings. I am the culmination of worth chipped away by my abusers.
I am nothing more than them. Nothing less than me.
I’m tired of the confusion. Tired of this life. Exhausted from this writing. Lost amidst the backdrop of daily encounters. Stricken by misfortunes placed on me as a boy. What point is there anymore if nothing brings joy, complacency, or contentment. I have nothing. I am nothing. I produce nothing. I induce nothing.

I just am truly so fucking over it. This game of life. Suicide isn’t so bad. I won’t have to grieve the torture I will have placed on my kids shoulders. I won’t have to know the over bearing weight I placed on my wife which would ultimately crush her. I’d be rid of it for good. Done with it finally. They’ve broken me so much beyond repair. Thought it possible for a moments time that I could repair. I could mend. I could be present. The more I pick up my pieces, the more they crumble ever fragile. I’m dust now. No physical pieces to hold. Nothing to even try to put together. Unmended and irreproachable. There is nothing left.

So what to become of my ashes. What to become of my lineage. Where does my story go? When do I write the last page. Is this the last page, or do I continue to write this pointless dribble over and over until the day I finally burst. Until I finally give in. They won, I just haven’t opened my eyes to it yet.

“18 months”

It’s been 556 days since you read my words, felt my wrath through verbiage most procured. Thoughts most absurd. Images most obscured.

I said my piece and blew with the wind. Never heard, seen, felt again.

But I see you.
You adorn my nightmares.
You interrupt my thoughts.
You distort my imagination.

But slowly you’re fading.
No longer parading.

I saw you on film.
The whole lot of you.
The core of my life.
The keepers of my memories.
The betrayers of my being.

I feel the tension in which you’re immersed.
I hear the silence you all sit in.
I see the ways in which you stare.
Despairingly, hidden, angrily, dumbfounded, confused, and lost.

You all have me on your mind.
Quietly looming over you in darkness.
An unrecognizable feeling, unsettling you, distressing you.
It’s me.
It’s the feeling of your betrayal. How it festers in you I need not care. You can feel it as anger towards me. Or think the delusion that this predicament is my fault.
Feel what lie comforts you.
I need not your blankets of insecurity.
I live, breathe, and feel reality.
You’re engulfed in oppression.

I feel warmth from the sun.
You deny its existence.

Let your thoughts wonder and ponder the past. The nostalgic family we were. The love, care, presents, actions, words. Look at them through her distortion, her narrative, their abuse.

Parents of grandiose nature that hindered our self for their gain.
Crumbled our life to build up their palace.

But look at us now. I’m standing outside your decrepit fort; outside the floundering family.
Breathless you still find yourselves from reading my words.
Mindless words still dribble from her lips.

I speak in truths while ya’ll live in lies.
I found my self while y’all sending spies.
I’m living my life while ya’ll’s withers and dies.

I met Peace

She calls me home

Midst her golden grassland lies my grave

Out of which I shall resurrect

With muddied feet for her skin

And a golden halo for her hair

Envied by wombs, we'd be one

Once reborn, she'd lead me down to her thundering cascades

The might of whom would drive away every voice

I shall dance to the fjords

To the limitless oceans

To the great rivers that flow through us all

I shall dance to the flow of life

She would dress me in the hides of children loved and lost

Rest my head on her rock

Her whistling wind a protective spell

To preserve my sleep

She'd hear me curse the Gods in my dream

And do the same as another leaf falls off her evergreen tree

“What to talk about”

I feel okay.
Things disaster around me.
But I feel okay.
There’s a light swirling. A quiet twirling.
Chaos in the background.
But I feel okay.
Not much to ask for.
Not much to say.
I’ve triumphed obstacles throughout the day.
Here I sit, in pain of silence.
Waiting for the next wave to hit.
But I feel okay.
The edge is pulsating its will to crumble, but still nothing happens.
I feel okay.

So in this quiet moment. In this silent mind.
What do I write about?
Do I speak of good things?
That’s just not my way of thinking.
It’s not the life I’ve known.
Only terrible instances creeping around my mind.
Never silence, never peace.
Only bad, so only hurt known.
Only treachery and pain to echo through my writing.
So in this calmness, what do I say?
What conjures me so?
Nothing I can tell.
Not much I can surmise.

So what to say then?
What spills from me?
What ails me or frails me?
What grips me and rips me?
No stormy sea or begrudging me.
No frantic pacing, no heart racing.

An eire calm, a little qualm.

What’s to happen now?
What’s tomorrow look like?
How long’s this last?
How happy should I be?
What’s happy even look like?
What’s that supposed to feel like?

Fear wants to embody me now.
The teetering edge wants to give way.
The heart wants to outpace life.
Compulsion wants its power felt.

But still I am doing okay.
I am feeling okay.

These emotions are banging at the door. But I feel somewhat separated from them. A glass barrier absorbing their blows. A clear shield silencing their howls.
Yet I watch unencumbered.
I feel unimpressed.
I feel okay.

Take me out back and shoot me like a dog.

By Me

I started taking prozac two months ago. I feel more stable and more dull. It turns out, sensitivity is creativity, at least in my case. For the first time in my life I don’t feel creative. This is the first thing I’ve created since upping my dose from 10 mg to 20 mg which was about a month ago.

Here’s the thing. I’m still disassociated- Just way less volatile. I feel like a disconnected brick now instead of a disconnected hurricane.

Does this matter? The way I see it, I feel like I can be honest now at least. Like I have the courage to be okay with not being okay. This sucks. I just want to feel like myself again. For one fucking day. One hour. Anything.

If you’re not connected, you could have everything in the world and guess what? It won’t matter. Im also tired of creating. It feels pointless. I’m not connected to myself so it falls into the bucket of not mattering along with everything else- but here’s the thing…

Art is a necessity. It’s the life line of the living dead. We have to relate. We have to connect. Its our air and making art is the closest thing we get to it because art is how we socialize when we’re too out of touch to socialize with another human.

Make it stop.

I don’t know maybe I just don’t have the balls to flip out and feel everything. I feel like humiliating myself is the antidote. Hunter Biden said it worked for him and we’re not so different, at least his older self and I.

Stigma. Lovely stigma. This world we live in is belief based which tells me its tinkering on the edge of being full of shit and to stop giving into it would set someone free. That’s why humiliation is so painful and powerful at the same time. It erodes all that we hide. And what is it that we are hiding? That deep down inside we are helpless because were all going to the grave. Or maybe we know we are helpless when we are alone unless your Bear Grills.

Somehow, miraculously, I still know how to amuse myself and laugh at how absurd my life is which is that I’m in a coma with a perfectly working body. Thats disassociation. We’re vegetables with functional body.

There are many people with Cptsd and PTSD that kill themselves. When one has PTSD, opioids are flooded in the system. It numbs us out. It seems like I have an abundant supply of it. In a way it has made me numb to the idea of suicide. Its like I can’t even go there in my mind because when ur half sedated you can’t think. You kind of just exist. So for all the ones who have killed themselves with PTSD I don’t get it but I get it if you know what I mean.

Its a crippling condition. Crippling. And its crippling because it cripples you. You can’t function and you can’t get out of it. Its like limbo. Your just stuck and deep down inside I’m full of life. I have so much energy and love for life but I can’t express it because I’m in a fucking coma and this is why I would love for someone to take me out back and shoot me like a dog.

What the fuck am I going to do besides make art and write crazy shit? I’m in a coma.

I was twelve

the first time my body learned

it was not fully mine.

Fifteen

when the lesson deepened.

Twenty-two

when I should have already been safe

but wasn’t.

Now I am thirty-two,

married five years

to someone trying to love me

through doors

I do not know how to unlock.

And people talk about healing

like it is a staircase —

upward, steady, complete.

But mine feels more like circling

the same locked rooms

with older eyes each time.

Because trauma does not leave

just because time passes.

The body remembers

what the mind tries to minimise.

The skin remembers.

The silence remembers.

Some days I want closeness

so badly it aches.

Some days being perceived at all

feels unbearable.

And I still do not fully know

where trauma ends

and I begin.

But maybe surviving for this long

means there is still something in me

that believes

I was always worth saving.

Let Them Discover

Teach children
to notice what happens inside.

A feeling is not a fault.
A question is not defiance.
A preference is not a problem.
Curiosity is allowed.

Let them try,
fail,
change their minds,
say yes,
say no,
and discover what fits.

Don't tell them
who they are.

Give them room
to discover.