I did not ask for the shield; I built it because the alternative was falling apart. Every wall, every cold response, every habit of echoing others was put in place to keep a child safe in a world that was not. Given a quiet, safe start, I would have grown wide open to the daylight just like anyone else—the distance I carry isn’t who I chose to be, but how I survived what happened to me.
Tag Archives: childhood
A Book With Loose Pages…
The brain builds its own prisons long before we ever understand what we are locked inside of. This is how a child learned to bargain with terror, how disorders built their walls, and what happens when the pages refuse to stay bound.
Because You Never Spoke…
Society has a rigid script for child abuse, expecting it to fit a predictable box. But sometimes it’s the person least expected, so nobody asks and nobody questions.
Later in life, when you try to tell a psychologist you were abused as a child, they immediately hand you leaflets on sexual abuse. Rather than exhausting yourself trying to correct them and explain that it wasn’t that at all, you just keep quiet. The way you have all your life. Until now.
Misfit…
A young child builds the foundation for one disorder and at eleven is ambushed by another. With no one to help or advise, she gets lost and becomes a misfit.
I Asked My Mother…
A raw, brutal subversion, tracing the sharp edges of splitting, impulse, and survival through the unvarnished reality of BPD and OCD.
Resurrection…
As a child I was given whatever I wanted. Everyone looked at all the gifts and called me spoiled. They didn’t understand that I was being bought off, that all the things I was given were in place of safety and love. That I would have traded every single thing I was ever given just to have a normal childhood like they had.
My Family…
Some maps aren’t drawn on paper. They’re etched into the wiring of a child who learned early on that safety is a performance, survival has a cost, and the mind has to shatter just to hold the weight.
Dear Me…
My childhood was hard—I’m not going to lie. My OCD began around the age of four, which shows how traumatic those years were. I was reaching for anything to help me survive, and my brain settled on counting, prayers and rules. It brought me through, but those compulsions never let go and remain with me to this day. My BPD didn’t surface until I was around eleven. So this piece is for my OCD.
Am I A Monster?…
My childhood taught me that love is dangerous. Between a violent alcoholic father and a mother who refused to leave, my child’s brain simply cut the wires to survive. I don’t love, and I don’t want to be loved. It’s just how I am and I don’t miss something I’ve never had. But I am not a monster. I am just different.
Part Three: The Fourth Revealed…
I have always called my OCD The Professor—rules, logic, and calculating. My BPD, The Aggressor—intense, raw, and protective. The “me” is The Passenger, dissociated and watching from afar. But as I’ve written my poetry and dug down deep, I’ve realised there was a fourth all along: The Architect. The child who put all of this into motion as she fought to survive, creating who I am today.
Just Say No…
They teach you to say no to drugs when you’re a child but they don’t tell you what happens when your own mind is the place you are running from. When the past is a house on fire, you don’t hesitate at the door, you take whatever will burn the ghosts away just to get some quiet. Unfortunately a child doesn’t know that the quiet comes at a terrible cost. And the adult pays for it when those lost memories return.
Part Two: The Beginning of The Three…
From childhood trauma and the birth of ritualised protection, through the blur of addiction, erasing the traumatic memories, to their devastating return brought on by motherhood—where fragmented pieces must finally gather to guard the whole.
A story…
‘A Story’ is a raw, personal reflection on living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) rooted in past childhood trauma.