When people talk about their beginnings, they often speak as if the past is something you escape.
As if you leave it behind once you grow up, move away, or start over.
That was never true for me.
I didn't walk away from my beginnings.
I carried them.
The Past Didn't Stay in the Past
Everything I survived followed me quietly into adulthood:
- the hyper-awareness
- the need for control
- the discomfort with rest
- the instinct to stay ready
- the fear of depending too deeply on anyone
Not because I wanted it to—but because survival teaches lessons the nervous system memorizes.
I learned early how to endure.
Unlearning has taken much longer.
What Pain Gave Me Without Asking
I don't believe trauma is a gift.
I would never tell someone they are "lucky" for what they survived.
But I can be honest about this:
Pain shaped me in ways that matter.
It gave me empathy without effort.
It gave me patience for broken people.
It gave me an instinct to protect.
It gave me an intolerance for cruelty.
It gave me the ability to sit with others in their darkness without flinching.
I know what it feels like to be unseen.
So I try to see people.
Why Kindness Was a Choice, Not an Accident
Kindness did not come naturally from my environment.
It came from decision.
I chose not to become what hurt me.
I chose not to pass the damage forward.
I chose gentleness when hardness would have been easier.
That choice wasn't heroic.
It was survival in a different direction.
Strength That Was Never About Muscles
Strength, to me, has never meant dominance.
It means:
- staying human when the world invites you to harden
- choosing restraint over rage
- choosing compassion over bitterness
- choosing to keep your heart open even when it would be safer to close it
The strongest thing I ever did was refuse to let pain define my character.
The Beginning of Faith, Not the End of Questions
Faith didn't arrive in my life as certainty.
It arrived as hope.
Hope that suffering wasn't meaningless.
Hope that survival wasn't accidental.
Hope that the story wasn't over just because the first chapters were hard.
I didn't yet know how God fit into my story.
But I believed—somewhere deep inside—that I was still here for a reason.
That belief would grow later.
Slowly. Imperfectly.
Why These Chapters Matter
I'm writing these chapters not to reopen wounds, but to tell the truth about where I came from.
Because healing doesn't happen by pretending.
Because growth doesn't happen without honesty.
Because the man I became makes no sense without the boy I was.
These were my beginnings.
Not gentle.
Not safe.
Not fair.
But they were not the end.
"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." — 2 Corinthians 4:16-17