beams of self-acceptance

For most of this year, I experienced a lot of internal dissonance regarding my age. Even though I was a legal adult who could check into a hotel on her own, go to concerts on her own, travel to New York City alone (?!), my internal age didn’t reflect that. As I meandered along city streets this summer, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it felt “wrong” for me to be out and exploring the city on my own. In my head, and in conversations with others, I’d proudly assert that I felt younger than I actually was, like it was a badge of honour. 

And as much as I love to think of myself as a tween endowed with adult privileges, the reality was that I was freezing time to the person I was when I was 12, the version of myself that existed before any trauma happened, the “natural” version of myself. That’s who I wanted to see myself as, and who I wanted other people to see me as. I barely remember anything from my teen years, I didn’t feel like myself during those years, so surely they didn’t happen, I’d tell myself.

I now realize that just because I don’t remember certain years or events from my life, doesn’t mean that I didn’t exist during those years, doesn’t mean that the clock wasn’t still ticking, as ever. That my clinging onto the version of myself who was 12 stemmed, in part, from my inability to look squarely at the versions of myself that did exist during those years. 

…

No one wants to admit that they spent all their teen years, and extending into their early 20s, dealing with dissociation, hyper-vigilance, limerence, and suppressing their true identity and desires, that defense mechanisms to trauma commanded years of their life. That their mind was clouded, elsewhere, dissociated from reality, that they couldn’t be in this world, that their entire existence was centered around devising clever but insidious ways of responding to trauma. Time moves fast enough as it is, and it sure as hell zips by when you’re constantly on high alert, fuelled by an overactive amygdala.

…

It’s easy for me to view my teen years as years that were snatched away from me, as years that were lost or wasted. To blame myself for not nipping a situation in the bud, and instead letting it fester in my mind for eight years. But recently, I’ve been trying to view the younger versions of myself with more compassion. To not look away from those versions of myself, but approach them from a place of acceptance. She was flawed and had maladaptive coping mechanisms, yes, but she was a young girl trying to navigate an unfathomable situation on her own. And she continued to exist despite it all, to exist against the backdrop of pain and fear, even if she didn’t know when it would end, if it would end. And maybe that, in itself, is enough: that she had enough self-love to continue to exist, with the hope that one day, she would feel better, no matter how distant it seemed. 

I look back at the pictures of myself from when I was 12, nearly 13, where there was a light in my eyes, a beaming smile. The image of myself that I held onto so tightly, the version of myself that I wanted to believe was still in me. Now, for the first time since then, I have a genuine smile on my face, a smile that isn’t holding anything back, a smile that isn’t hiding anything. It feels refreshing to exist in the world again, to feel like a person, to feel the sunbeams while walking around the block. She’s worth celebrating, as are the versions of her that came before.