I Was Just A Child

For a while, I hid. I told myself that I was alright. I covered the pain in counterfeit smiles and fabricated laughs because I was too ashamed to admit that the grief was too heavy a weight for my young shoulders to carry and I was starting to become unbalanced.

Because, at the end of the day, I was just a child, simply trying to survive.

I think I sometimes forget just how much innocence I have lost in these last five years. How different a person I became because the current version of myself wasn’t equipped on how to deal with all the suffering. And just how hardened my little heart was forced to become in order to withstand its bleeding wounds.

Maybe it’s because whenever I remind myself of that time in my life, I have to remember all the hurt that came along with it. I have to remember that first night where I slept in my mother’s bed alongside my sister, praying that the bullet hadn’t actually reached my body and that somehow he wasn’t gone.

Anyone who has experienced loss at a young age knows the resentment of having to grow up too fast while everyone else seems to get the chance to grow at an average rate.

But I, I didn’t get to do that.

And sometimes I wish I did.

When you survive loss, everyone is quick to tell you how strong you are and how tough you must be. But actually, no one has a choice to survive grief, do they? It’s not optional. You just have to cry in the shower, sob in your pillow, and pray you make it.

-Zoe Clark-Coates

Now that I am older, I am able to see my scars with a new set of eyes. I am also able to recognize the fact that I was a child put in a very adult situation, and not a single part of me deserved to go through that.

And that you don’t either.

I wish I knew how to cure a broken heart, but it feels impossible when my broken pieces have broken pieces.”

-Unknown