Traveling Show

josiahd:

When I was a kid, I was afraid.

All the time. All of it.

People were trying to reformat me.

But they meant well. They thought they were helping me.

They weren’t being concern trolls. They actually cared.

But I was so scared and so isolated and so — ghostly in so many ways.

And they didn’t tell me why. Not mostly. And I think they were lying about most of it.

And all I knew was that I didn’t want them to.

And that if I valued my mind, and wanted to stay who I was, there were things I’d better not talk about ever. There were things I had to hide.

And sometimes my resistance was compliance. Compliance that cost me my dignity and made it hard for me to learn to communicate, but which let me hide and preserve things I knew would be destroyed if they were seen.

And I knew this when I was a little kid.

And I resisted with everything I had.

And it cost me a lot, but I did it.

And I really, really wanted to be an adult so that I wouldn’t have to be so scared anymore, so people wouldn’t have the power to force me to more intense attempts at reformatting.

And then when I turned 18, I wasn’t as scared anymore.

And it made having a relationship with my parents possible again.

And the older I get, the safer I feel.

And.

I’m not nostalgic about childhood.

I’m grateful that I made it to adulthood mostly unbroken, and that I will *never* have to be a child again.

Yes, I have nothing to add.