The Wound That Learned to Speak

Growing up, one of the phrases I picked up from my father was:

“Any action is better than no action because it allows you to function.”

It made sense at the time because not acting meant stillness. And stillness… I could not bear the thought of it. So I adopted his saying as a personal motto.

Remaining still equaled boredom. It was a prison for both my mind and my body. Yet that state also invited the very snowball effect I feared. Stuck in repeated patterns, I kept finding myself on a gradual decline.

At first, I didn’t realise, because I functioned in a way that fascinated others. When I thought I was chasing interactions, I was really chasing validation. That constant demand eventually brought me to my own end. In time, the happiness of others became my happiness. I dismissed my own needs, and in return I received nothing back.

The more I dismissed myself, the more others spared me from acknowledging my authentic self.

When we are children, we easily pick up skills or languages because neuroplasticity is at its most effective. When my only wish was to play the piano, my brain wired itself in learning that I was not owed my mother’s love.

When I gain my consciousness, this echoe found its faces and shaped form as my sisters.

Before I was born, my parents worked long hours, leaving my sisters with my grandmother. A decade later, I arrived after their sacrifices had paid off. My parents had time, presence, and resources. Five of us lived under one roof, yet never on equal ground. My mother and I had the hardest share. She was blamed for being the one who raised me, and I was blamed for being raised by her own mother.

As a child, I never understood the impact that wound had on my heart. Even up until last year, I was still asking myself,

Why does being loved matter to me so much?

Now I realise, growing up, my sisters made me feel as though I should never have arrived. That's why, proving I deserved to be welcomed became the battle of my life. With that seed planted at my core, I ended up never feeling truly satisfied with my life.

Yet that unconscious motivation shaped me in a way that I could leveraged all my life. I won many hearts. People loved having me around. I listened, I asked questions and never minimised someone else’s problems. When my understanding arrived, my words carried resonance.

The answers live in the details. If you pay attention, even everyday interaction reveals what one’s soul desires. It was not me speaking, it was my wound. It had taken a vow at its creation, promising to acknowledge every person as an authentic individual. It takes one to know one, and that is why I easily cracked the equation.

My sister never bothered to acknowledge that I was a person who needed recognition. It was somewhat forgivable when I was younger, but now I am about to turn 27, and instead of acknowledgement, what I face is dismissal.

Blame, is a mistake I'm trying no to make. When I interact, I always try to take accountability of my emotions.

My sisters had been mirroring my own interpretation, yet here is the paradox: as infants, we shape our sense of self through our environment. I feel dismissed because I dismissed myself first, but I learned that dismissal from my environment. That is what I mean when I say neuroplasticity shaped things. My brain learned survival patterns before I could choose, and those patterns became the lens through which I saw myself.

Recently, I feel like I am standing at the edge of change, something within is shifting. But I also know, change is not a quick fix so today I start by choosing.

I refuse to accept what I was given, my life will only be of my own making.

The ideologies that I once carried so deeply, I now choose to release. Alignment has never arrived in obvious ways; it was always my reasoning that shaped it’s meaning and universe does not yield to those who turn away from their calling.

At the point of no return, only ruins remain of what once felt like home. With the very power I call my own, I now choose to seek the only validation that can shift things.

I choose to be me, chaotic, messy, and imperfect. In my book, that’s the only way to be one of a kind.

🦋