Feeling sad this morning. I am in the process of grieving. In the process of reconnecting to my childhood. Beginning to see the needs I had that were not met. I needed to be loved. Seen. Understood. Accepted. I needed to feel like I belonged. I did not feel like I belonged. Up until about a year ago, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt different. Out of place. Misunderstood. I felt tainted. Like there was something wrong with me that kept people from being able to love me. I had a lot of people around me while I was growing up. I had my family, my father’s church, my school, but I felt like I didn’t belong in any of those places. I wondered what was wrong with me that made me so different. It made me hate myself. It made me wish I wasn’t alive. It made me feel empty. I was filled with the deepest sense of loneliness. Feeling like I was completely alone and misunderstood on this planet and like I would be completely alone and misunderstood wherever I went after death also. It filled me with fear because I thought that even in death there would not be an escape from this isolation and loneliness.
I think these feelings of being different, misunderstood, and like I didn’t belong are the roots of some of my suicidal thoughts. I think feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere on this planet made me not want to be on this planet. It made me feel like a mistake. Like god or whoever created me messed up and I shouldn’t be here. It made me want to correct his mistake and remove myself from this place.
I am adult now. I have friends now. I have a place where I belong. But I cannot shake the thoughts and feelings I had as a child. I cannot shake my beliefs about myself and the world that were created during my most formative years. Do I belong here? Am I loveable? Am I worth it? I’m feeling sad this morning. Because I am remembering how I felt as a child. I am remembering the isolation. The loneliness. The feelings of rejection. I am not alone now. But I am grieving the years that I was. I am reconnecting with that child. Learning that it was not her fault. But as I reconnect with her my sadness grows. Because no child deserves to grow up feeling that way. No child deserves to feel like there is nowhere they belong. So today, I am grieving. Grieving for the child who grew up believing she was all alone.