Excuse the wreckage.
These thoughts keep spilling out, so I built this container to hold them—someplace to put the damage while I try to keep living. I’m filing them away, out of the foreground, so they don’t crowd out whatever kinder memories might still exist. But they resist. They take up space. Too much of it.
Each one feels heavier than the last. Each one peels back another layer of hurt. Episodes from my childhood. Emotional damage inflicted by the people who were supposed to protect and nurture me—the ones I trusted with shaping who I was meant to become.
The slow undoing:
I didn’t understand then what words and experiences could do to a child trying to grow into someone who mattered, someone confident, someone successful. I couldn’t see the damage as it was happening: the deterioration, the slow undoing of me.
I became desperate for acceptance. For inclusion. Better at blending into the shadows than standing in the light. A presence, but an unnoticed one. Children were to be seen and not heard, and I learned that lesson well. I mastered disappearance early.
The household:
I grew up in a house where I existed to serve the adults in charge. I was a vessel—meant to absorb anger, frustration, impatience. I didn’t have parents; I had creators. Always hurried. Always brushing us aside.
Love, encouragement, pride in small victories—those were foreign concepts. A’s could always be better. Success was never enough. Milestones passed without celebration. I watched other families from a distance and wished I belonged to them. Instead, I became exactly what my environment produced.
The role I was assigned:
I was taught to be a background character in my own family. Skittish. Hypervigilant. Afraid of my own shadow. Physical discipline was expected, absorbed as normal.
I was forced into the role of example for my three younger siblings—two of them nearly a decade behind me. Small humans looking to me for approval I had never learned how to give. I tried anyway. I was always the cause. Always responsible. Always expected to teach them how to disappear too. Quiet. Polite. Seen, never heard.
The memories that won’t stay quiet:
Hiding behind the couch as my father crashed through the door, his temper arriving before he did.
Running to my parents’ room at five years old after a nightmare, only to be scolded for waking them.
A car door torn from its hinges by his anger—somehow my fault.
A can dropped on my foot to teach obedience.
Blood on my head ignored because a light fixture was broken.
A sledding accident that mattered less than a Christmas photo.
Winning a bike race and splitting my head open, proud of the blood on my face—until my mother noticed the stain on my shirt.
What I was told about myself:
Nothing I did was ever right. I can still hear my mother’s words: you will never amount to anything. I was raised to be a wife, not a person. College was discouraged. Ambition was inconvenient.
I pushed back anyway. With my grandparents’ help, I went. I studied English because it was acceptable—and pre-law because it was mine. I graduated from a distinguished institution with a degree and a quiet pride they never came to witness. It was too hot to sit through the ceremony. My brother’s track meet mattered more to them.
By then, their disappointment had lost its teeth. I stopped reaching for what was never offered. Their absence of approval didn’t define me—it clarified me. I built myself anyway.
This wreckage isn’t a confession. It’s an inventory. I’m naming what was done, not to carry it forward, but to decide—deliberately—what no longer comes with me.
Rising out of the wreckage,
K
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I'm Still Here. Somehow... 