A child’s safe place is it’s home, but what do you do if your home wasn’t a home for you? Its high time we start acknowledging that we are forever hungry for the things we craved in our childhood. The demons who take birth in your childhood never really die, they might become less scary but that does not mean they don’t exist.

You start seeing the present world from the eyes of that inner child, who is still traumatized and that’s when our behaviour is influenced by that scared little child under the table who is scarred enough to be able to sabotage every potential healthy relation.

I for one spent my almost my whole childhood challenging myself in every step of my way for seeking the feeling of being worthy, and when you start that ultimate battle of living in constant misery mission, that in no time becomes the end goal for you and the rewards from that or relaxation from that may seem like happiness, and the contrary may feel like a failure, and the lack of task may make you feel unproductive and that in turn unworthy again, which in reality is not the case, it’s the complex construct you had built in your head which had rooted from the trauma you did not recover from. The battle does not end here, the most challenging part of it was the adolescence years of my life, where this pattern of my behaviour turned me into a person who was a jack of all trades, but master of none, because wherever I went I felt the need of pleasing people in every aspect, I felt the need of seeking their validation in every aspect which in turn lead me to do anything and everything just enough to be appreciated, irrespective of my interests. And the fact that it became my aim to do so, drove all my attention towards it and that lead me to work very hard for it and when each time I was accepted I was keener to do it again. The kick of being the chosen one was the high I constantly wanted to feel.

This also made me think that I was an extrovert, but I wasn’t; extroversion was imposed on me by myself, but that helped me boost my confidence and self-esteem and with a pinch of self-love I started to heal, I was suddenly okay with not being the chosen one, at least that’s what I thought at that time but it was true to an extent.

As we all say “relapse is a part of recovery” to satisfy our ego, that phase was waiting around the corner for me, just when I thought I started to know what life is beyond my trauma it hit me, again; but that’s exactly what life does. I found a person with whom I got involved. Every second of every day was a new challenge for me, my relationship was exactly what every other self-destructive relation looked like, it involved proving your love, proving that you are worthy, sabotaging the relationship when it's going well for a while and hundreds of other things. Every moment of it was a battle. What can I say? Old habits die hard. And just like a lot of relations tend to end, it did too but for good, at least that’s what I like to think.

But proving yourself to the world and someone significant for you is a little different, even though this was something I put myself through on my own, the shame of losing it was way worse than a mere failure, because this times the emotions were involved, just like they were involved at the very start where all this rooted from, my demons did catch up to me, like they always tend to do, don’t they? , and this time they didn’t give me a chance to cope with it using substitutes, rather they shattered me and my sense of security which also further broke my faith in humanity and more importantly in myself. I became from a person who would not mind singing in front of a crowd even with a sore throat to a person who felt anxious in talking to people or even leaving the room at and it would have been okay for me if it were not chronic, but it was and that kind of sucked.

I wouldn’t dare to blame it all on my misery there were hundreds of things popping up along the way just like that notification ping of the gram, that’s the thing with life, isn’t it? it happens all at once lets you get up from a fall only to fall a little harder, and there is this thing with us too, the way we start reacting to life is very likely the way the same way we perceive things, so if your ways of coping with one trauma were not very productive there is a high chance your judgment would be clouded for the upcoming ones, correcting yourself is the challenge.

Although as hard as it was, I would never trade anything for anything else, not even the consecutive nights of despair, self-harm, and weeping. Because every moment of it made me more humane than I was. I would not say that I have recovered, because I am not even sure if one ever completely recovers from anything that has left a mark on them, no matter how small or how big; you constantly keep learning and growing. Even the smallest of actions can make a huge difference in your life, in the way you see things, in the way you react to things, and in the way you feel things. So when I say “those little things, they aren’t little” I mean it with every cell of my being.

This is the answer to my one of many unspoken questions, but as I grow along I am positive about finding out more and more, with one motto, of always remembering to forgive myself when I am in the survival state, being said that also never forgetting to learn and to grow.

Every next second I learn something new about myself and the world around me, some lessons are to be proud of some are not, everything comes to me as raw material and the way I react to it is my final product, so no matter how rotten the raw material is the end product can be anything you want, it can be something disgusting but please remember it can be your delicious wine too, and a little wine is always a good idea.