ADULTING
Become The Parent You Never Had
But we can’t just sit and stare at our wounds forever.
But we can’t just sit and stare at our wounds forever.
But we can’t just sit and stare at our wounds forever.
Like a prayer, I resurrected Haruki Murakami’s line on days when even the simplest act of waking up takes courage. Like a desperate lullaby, I whisper it to myself when I feel like a candle flickering in and out of life.
Between those lines — like a parent willing a child, I tell myself:
Go on. Keep going because you can’t just sit and stare at your wounds forever.
I know, sometimes all you want to do is stare at it because tending it hurts you more. I know it hurts so much, throwing your hands off in the air and calling quits on life feels better.
I know it hurts but you can’t keep on hurting forever. I know you have been staring at it for too long, your wounds become you. But we can’t always make monuments out of our wounds. We can’t always leave a legacy out of it.
Sometimes, a wound is simply a wound. Nothing more, nothing less. And sometimes it bleeds out of nowhere even if the blow was dealt a long time ago. But, we have no choice but to let it bleed and keep going anyway.
Everyone — your family, friends, and even the fancy and picture-perfect strangers in magazines had been mistreated and abandoned in some shape and form.
But, guess what?
Everyone has a life to live. There is work to do, bills to pay, friends to meet, and relationships to get over with. People carry on because sadly, they have no choice. Because our feelings are not the end all be all of life.
Pain is not the end. And if it is, is a story defined only by its ending? Are our stories defined by pain and pain alone?
Pain is not the end because somehow, we will manage to pat ourselves on the back after a long and tiring day.
“You did great today.”
Somehow, we will learn to push ourselves out of bed for our dreams. Somehow, we will become our greatest fans. Somehow, despite the tragedy of life, we will become the parents we never had.
Somehow, we will outgrow them. We will outgrow their rage. We will outgrow moments where they make us feel unheard.
We will talk to ourselves and we will listen.
We will give the time and space we need because, back then, they never gave it to us. We will not call ourselves stupid whenever we make mistakes because back then, they hurt us by doing so. We will be there for ourselves because back then, they rarely did.
We will outgrow them and somehow we will stop becoming a helpless child who doesn’t know what to do except to cry and stare at their wounds.
