Trauma shapes us in different ways.
More profoundly, it makes us all complex, which you can view as a good thing or a bad thing.
I see it in my own behavior. I'm self-aware, which isn't to say it makes me better or more significant in the recognition of it, but it's an observation. I see my own flinching, mental or physical.
I hesitate internally. The playful language of poking and prodding at a kind face is something familiar to only one other person.
I trusted that person.
And that person hurt me.
He chose to do that.
But you're not him, are you?
You're gentle. Understanding. Communicative.
All the same, I feel the neural pathways tangling when I choose to be myself as I was back then. I wonder quietly to myself how long it will take to heal from a bad childhood. How long it will take to get to the end of grieving something so long ago.
I pray not for the god he wanted me to. I pray for patience.
