I Can’t Fix My Childhood. And I’m Finally Okay With That.

I had a realization this morning that stopped me in my tracks.

I have been putting my entire adulthood on hold trying to fix something that cannot be fixed.

My childhood.

Now I live in a world I don’t enjoy, because I’ve adopted this mindset that i’m this incomplete little girl, trying to travel back in time and fix myself.

Constantly looking at what happened. What should have happened. What I deserved and didn’t get. And somewhere in that back and forth I completely miss what is actually happening right now.

And that, that… might be the saddest thing I’ve ever admitted out loud.

Here is the paradox that has been destroying me silently:

I am trying so hard to heal that I am not actually living. I am so focused on becoming a better version of myself that I am paralyzed in the current one. I am working so hard to not be a victim of what happened to me that I have made myself a victim of surving instead of living.

I may have outgrown cutting myself with a blade.

But this, this obsession with fixing, perfecting, healing, rising above, this is the worst kind of self harm.

It has a name.

Self sabotage.

I heard someone say this recently, and I just can’t unhear it:

“You can’t pick up adulthood if you keep holding onto what you missed as a kid.”

I heard it and something cracked open.

Because that is exactly what I have been doing. Holding onto the childhood I didn’t get. Waiting for an apology that will never come. Waiting to be fixed before I allow myself to actually live.

And meanwhile, life is happening. Right now. Without me in it.

The reality is in order for me to become and adult, I have to let go of the childhood I didnt get! Because if I dont…

I’m awake but asleep!

I’m alive, but dead!

I’m sleep walking through my life!

And the saddest part is, I have all the tools to set myself free.

I know what surrender looks like. I know what acceptance means. I have been in therapy for decades. I have read the books. I have done the programmes. I have sat in the clinic. I have done the work.

And yet.

I stay in the prison.

And I think I know why.

Because freedom is unfamiliar. And unfamiliar feels unsafe. And somewhere along the way my nervous system decided that pain was home.

How do you leave the only home you’ve ever known? How do I let down my gaurd? how do I let go of this paralysing fear?

But here is the truth I am choosing to hold onto today:

My childhood was not in my hands.

Who I am today is.

What happened to me;the abuse, the lack of support, the prayers that felt unanswered, the love that wasn’t given the way I needed it ,all of that is real. All of that happened. I am not minimising a single moment of it. My feelings are valid, I know that.

But it is done. It is over. And I cannot go back and complete it like an unfinished project.

The little girl in me deserves so much love and gentleness and grace.

But the adult Sushmita? She deserves to actually live.

And it is time,past time..for me to pick her up and go. Just the way she is.

So today I am done waiting to be healed before I start living.

I am done traveling back to a place I cannot change.

I am done holding onto pain because it feels more familiar than peace.

Today I accept what happened. I surrender the need to fix it!

Wait, I need to say it again:

I accept what happened, I surrender the need to fix it!

I choose imperfectly, nervously, one step at a time,to show up for the life that is happening right now.

Not the life I should have had.

The one I actually have.

Scared, but living..

— Sushmita