Healing
If there is one thing that I've learned at my age, it's that we are all here, just trying to heal a part of ourselves—a part that's been broken, hurt, or lost somewhere along the way. I think this is why I can't hold onto anger any longer, towards the people that I love, and even those that I still don't understand. We are all trying to overcome something that damaged us along the way, or find a part of ourselves that we once lost, or perhaps — something that was never there but we always wanted.
That is the funny thing about trauma: it's like the flu; you catch it and you pass it on, and it doesn't stop because somehow, it makes its way from one generation to the next, and then the next, and then the next. For example, when I look at my own mother and the time that I was sixteen. All she would do was spill cruel words that felt like a punch to the gut, the constant demeaning, distrust, anger and hurtful words made me question my love towards her. I admit this anger still lingers sometimes, but not because of me, because of my sisters.
Yet, when I look at my mother now, I see a little girl who really needed her mum, but she was not there. This little girl had to carry so much burden on her own, and she was probably afraid too. I don't know what what happened to her that day she really needed her mum, but I imagine it must've been so cruel for a child to face it alone and I am so sorry, that even until adulthood, she carried this pain alone.
Then, there are my sisters. I have a photo frame of both of them, they were no older then ten years old. In my eyes, I see two little girls that just wanted love and belonging and yet, they had to face the world alone. They were both so afraid, to be left alone in a home without a mum and dad, to be forced to pick sides between the battles of two adults that called themselves parents.
I can't imagine what it must've felt like, to feel abandoned and unprotected.
To have your childhood drained away from you, and I ask for what? For two, irresponsible adults that could not decide what they want. They didn't deserve it and it's not fair.
So how do you overcome it?
Can you overcome trauma? or do we just lock it away in a box and store it at the back of our minds?
When do we know that we've finally stopped carrying it with us, like a heavy baggage over our backs?
Do we ever heal? Some Psychologist would agree that yes, we do heal, we learn to overcome our traumas. Yes, some people go out of their way and spend hundreds of pounds on therapy sessions, to overcome their trauma and it feels like a transaction; I pay you, and you take my trauma away.
I ask, can our trauma be taken away?
Is there a possibility to heal?
Or do we reach a point, where we had enough and decide to break the cycle ourselves?
We can't always escape our traumas, the pain continues to linger until the very end of our lives, but we can learn to change our energy and differentiate our path, with the energy we choose to give out to the world and the people around us; that's people, habits, and our journey.
And I know it to be possible — for the cycle to be broken. I see it within myself when I choose to reach higher, ascending the ladder of career and the vast world of psychology, I see it when I step out of my comfort zone and experience the world that my elders failed so hard to see.
I see it when I look at my sisters with admiration, as they raise their children and carve their own paths, distinguishing themselves from our parents, never resorting to anger, neglect and conflict.
Lastly, I see it when I look at my mother with her grandchildren, no longer responding with the same ways of the past, but having grown and transformed, striving to be a better version of herself—the person she could not be before; or perhaps, the mother she should have been; or perhaps, the mother she wished she had; or perhaps, the grandmother she wished, her own children had.
I believe healing is possible but it may not come in the ways that we expect it, the goal is to try. Retorting to anger is too easy, but to try and mend the ways of the past is entirely different subject. You'll still have your trauma, it will always be there but you'll be remembered different to those that passed their trauma onto you.
What do we learn from this?
We all have trauma in one way or another, what distinguishes us from each other is what we choose to become; the perpetrator, or a healer.
What distinguishes us from each other is the energy we decide to send back to the world, and those around us.
The question remains, do we move forward? or do we retort to the same old ways as our elders, and our elder's elders, and our ancestors.
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