I wish someone had protected me and defended me as a child. I wish I didn’t have to spend the rest of my life processing the trauma that weighs so heavily on me.

It’s exhausting. I’m tired of it. I want to know what it’s like to have an adult brain that’s normal and healthy and happy. I’m so jealous of people who don’t feel the constraints of a traumatic childhood.

But talking about my childhood seems so petty when children in the world today are dying in wars that they are not fighting in. I feel guilty. I feel like I’m not allowed to be sad about my childhood because at least I survived. At least my childhood was good enough.

I guess I just want people to know that even if they were privileged enough to have had the means to survive through childhood, that trauma and pain and hurt isn’t any less real. We still deserve to heal. We still deserve better.