What Growing Up Too Soon Taught Me

Some children get to be children.

Others spend their childhood

learning how to survive.

I learned early how to be responsible.

How to stay quiet when things hurt.

How to carry more than I should.

How to make room for everyone else's needs

while slowly forgetting my own.

The strange thing about growing up too soon

is that nobody tells you it's happening.

You don't realize you're carrying weight

that was never meant for you.

You think being strong

means handling everything alone.

You get used to carrying things alone

because nobody ever taught you differently.

For years, I confused survival with living.

I thought making it through another day

meant I was healing.

I thought not falling apart

meant I was okay.

I thought carrying everything

by myself was something to be proud of.

But survival has a way of becoming

comfortable.

Familiar.

It becomes a place you return to,

even when you're tired of living there.

You become so used to being

the strong one that you stop believing

anyone will carry you.

You become so used to disappointment

that you stop expecting people to show up.

You become so used to surviving

that you forget you deserve more than survival.

The hardest part of healing

wasn't facing what happened.

It was accepting that what happened mattered.

It was realizing that the child

I once was deserved protection.

That love was never supposed to feel

like something I had to earn.

That being needed and being loved

are not the same thing.

Many of the stories I write live in that space

between survival and healing.

The place where people begin to question

what they were taught,

what they endured,

and what they deserve.

Because sometimes the deepest wound

isn't what happened to you.

Sometimes it's the belief

that you had to carry it alone.

— Abi Brooklyn