Betrayal (2024/10/27)

At a pivotal moment many years before, I searched and sorted through my many thoughts and found within it the notion of "trauma". Following countless pursuits of whys and what-ifs through that trauma, I dragged from their corpses the name of "grief".

My anger, which I had adapted to wield as a weapon, unraveled itself into a testimony of my grief. It was born from which orbited a single phrase, derived through a lens of a character that had touched me once upon two decades and once six years prior: to be failed.

I grieved for the many times I was failed, and for the child through whose sacrifice I was born as a byproduct of those failures. I sorrowed for the child who learned all the wrong things for themself, who learned to patch up their wounds in all the kind and unkind ways, and who grew not to expect anything at their efforts. They readied for a life that was barely a life at all.

I resented that child, but what I resented more were the eyes that turned away when they needed to be seen, and the ears that plugged away when their voice longed to be heard. What should have been there, and others would have taken for granted, was deprived from that child.

Through my grief once more, I unearthed a name for this hurt, this feeling of "betrayal".

How was I supposed to live on, drenched in the realization of all the hurt that child had endured at their own hands and at the hands of others? How was I supposed to repair that devastation, the domain of which spread to repercussions beyond my control?

How am I supposed to move forward, living in the shadow of countless betrayals that will neither meet nor accept apologies? No matter how much I'd wish to forward them, their true recipient cannot answer.

Even if I dropped to my knees and pleaded to them for answers, a ghost cannot respond.

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I fantasize often, of an alternate life where a child is loved in both body and soul. When they cry, their mother comes to their side and asks them what's wrong. When the child replies, they won't be blamed for their tears, nor will the cause of their pain be trivialized. They won't be accused of being ungrateful, or be told that they're asking for too much. Instead, their words will reach their mother, who will be able to recognize her mistakes and apologize.

"I'm sorry," she'll say. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'll do better for you next time."

This isn't that life. It won't be.

In that life, when a child is reduced to nothing more than a plague under the scrutiny of their peers, they won't be alone. When they cry in their mother's arms, their mother will be angry—not at, but for them. She'll realize the gravity of the situation and call the school, whose faculty will intervene and call in teachers, children, and the parents of those children. Perhaps afterwards, some kinder children will invite the child to be their friend, and the beginnings of a support system will form. That child won't need to whisper into a teacher's ears a wish to disappear.

Instead, they'll cry, "I'm happy I am understood."

This isn't that life. It can't be. Not anymore.

After all, at this moment, I exist.

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There lives a ghost inside me. Sometimes I hear its cries when the world is too much. Sometimes I shun them—scold them for being so fragile. "Maybe if you weren't born this way, you wouldn't have been hurt. Maybe if you had been a better child, you would have been loved."

But I cannot truly mean what I say, because however much I will it, it is not their fault. I cannot truly reject them with all my heart.

My life is in my own hands, but I refuse to forget. I will not forget that child's cries—the tears that they shed under the burden of too much, and the unspoken ones they wrapped under lock and key—after all, there solely remains me to remember them. I am the living evidence of those betrayals.

I decided that this is the best of an apology I can give them. Give myself. To heal, for me, is to choose to live as an act of defiance—not in ignorance of all that shaped me, but to let it drive me in the present. To give the notion of a future a chance, while acknowledging that the past is just as integral.

To treat myself as "human" as that child had desired more than anything to be seen as, and to become the adult that they needed the most.

To the me who reads this in the future, I entrust you with this:

Do not forget this feeling. Etch it into the ripples of your footsteps. Burn it into the recesses of your soul. Let it impassion you. Let it haunt you for the rest of your life.

To allow it to die in vain is to re-inflict the betrayal done onto you.