Naralume
Some things happened many years ago.
But my body doesn't know that.
Sometimes, all it takes is a smell, a voice, a sound. For a moment, the present disappears, and I am there again. Small. Afraid. Trying to figure out what I did wrong and what I need to do to be loved.
I spent much of my life trying not to go back to those places. Now I am doing exactly the opposite.
I am writing.
Not because I have finally found all the answers. I haven't. I write because there are memories that continue to live inside me, even after all these years. Some I can talk about. Others still turn me back into that child who learned far too early to stay quiet, not to ask for help, and to hide her own pain.
For a long time, I thought surviving meant leaving all of it behind.
Today, I'm not so sure.
Maybe writing this story is my way of discovering what remains of that little girl inside me, and who I would be without all this weight.
A story about trauma, memory, abandonment, silence, and survival-told by someone who is still trying to understand what it means to have survived.