Copied
You grow up yearning for love till one day, you realize that you outgrew it. Ask anyone that was ever orphaned. My high school principal used to say, “Don’t mourn a corpse for so long it begins to stink.” She lost her mother when she was just a child and her father remarried. Cliche as it goes, the stepmom was forged by the fires of hell. She would make her eat the leftovers after the servants had eaten. She tended to the cattle, fetched firewood and water, did so much chores her little fingers went sore and it didn’t matter that her father was a wealthy man. She was mistreated worse than the paupers in the street. Whenever she tried to talk to her father, the mother would beat her up and make her days a living hell. Her father, desperate for a family and peace looked the other way.
She grew up into a bright strong minded woman who decided that no human was ever going to make her feel as worthless as her family did. She built an impenetrable wall and surrounded herself with power and money! As a grown independent principal of a high school, she was a sight! But sometimes, when she stood before us to encourage us to grow into women that the world wouldn’t dare crush beneath it’s feet, I sensed in her voice, the little girl that wasn’t protected.
“I eat whatever I want now.” She would say. “I can afford it! Sometimes I go to the supermarket, look at the chicken and the things I wasn’t allowed to eat at home. I get filled with so much anger I buy everything I can lay my hands on, take them home, keep them in the fridge till they go bad and throw them away just to prove to myself that I am now capable of affording it.”
It was there, that little girl that had sort love and validation for so long till her seeking turned into bitterness because she was now too big and too capable for it.
Have you really given up on love or did you just outgrow it? Did you just “become wise” and sometimes, when no one is looking, you miss that ignorant bliss that allowed things to be special? Because when you lose that innocence, you realize life has no magic. And it sucks. It really sucks.
If you could go back in time but this time, you are not alone. This time, nobody forces you to grow up too fast. This time, they remember your birthdays. They hug you longer. They make you feel safe and protected. They make you a priority. They accept you. They don’t die on you and leave you in this big world to deal with it alone. If you could go back and undo it all … You’d realize that you have always believed in love. And this wall you carry around was forced on you.
