It’s 4 A.M. and I’m Hugging My Inner Child Again. Help.

I usually don’t check who views my stories. It makes me overthink, compare, shrink. It triggers anxiety I suppress because according to society, God forbid a woman of God professes that over herself. But today, I did. And it turned into something much bigger than I expected.

If I’m being honest I didn’t even scroll through, I just peeked at one name and it sent me spiraling. I started revisiting old classmates, old memories, old moments, old wounds, and I was that twelve year old girl again who wanted everyone to like her. I was that twelve year old girl who wasn’t even sure if she liked herself.

And if I’m being honest? She deserved better.

She deserved a hug.

She deserved the freedom to figure out who she wanted to be, not just who people said she was.

I remembered being bullied in junior secondary. It only lasted three days. But those three days lingered. And the people I saw today weren’t even involved, but somehow… I felt small again. I suddenly became conscious of myself. I started wondering if they regretted everything they said to me. If they remembered it at all. If they remember me at all.

And not in a desperate, please-notice-me way… just in a “do you even know what you did and how badly I struggled after that?” kind of way.

It’s so weird because I am over it. I’ve processed. I’ve outgrown that version of myself.

But healing is weird. Sometimes you don’t revisit stuff because the hurt still lingers quietly… And other times, you revisit it because it finally feels safe enough to look at.

But it didn’t feel safe today.

I think today was a quiet looking. A quiet remembering.

Not to re-open anything… but just to let myself say,

That happened.

It hurt.

And I lived.

Maybe that’s all healing is sometimes.

Looking at what once made you small and realizing it no longer shrinks you.

I’m not twelve anymore.

I don’t need everyone to like me.

And I like myself now.

That’s more than I had back then and it’s more than enough now.

I’m gonna wake up tomorrow, re-read this, and feel like I overshared.

But maybe that’s okay.

Maybe this is what healing looks like sometimes — deeply embarrassing and a little poetic.

Still… I’m never doing this at 4 a.m. again. Ever. 😭

Love always,

Narin.