LETTERS TO MY YOUNGER SELF: PART 4

Dear Boba,

You were told growing up;

You are really mature for your years.

You’re so wise beyond your years.

Oh my God, you’re such an old soul.

I used to feel so proud of being told that, for being a little above the maturity for my age and being a child, adults sometimes relied on for advice, comfort, and support.

But what if I told you the maturity came from having to grow up a little too quickly,a little too soon.

But what if I told you that my wisdom came from all the wounds that raised me.

And what if I told you that my old soul was just adaptive resourcefulness and hypersensitivity clothing learnings that almost broke me.

Because the older we get, the more we realize that it wasn’t that we were mature for our age. It’s that we were traumatized.

And now, here we are as adults, trying to swim to the shore with the anchor of all the things our childhood was, still pulling and tugging at our feet and it’s hard and it sucks because we deserved to exist as kids and live through the sheer naivety and innocence others were privileged to know but not me I was “maturing”.

The truth is grieving a childhood you didn’t have is really, really hard, but we are getting there, and I’m proud of us.

B.