Transcript
Words from the video
Memory comes back in pieces
Like light beneath a door
I called it freedom when I was young
But it was absence keeping score
I learned the world in fragments
Backyards, bruises, open rooms
No one taught me where the edges were
So danger found me too
It did not feel like neglect back then
It just felt like life to me
A child can call the silence normal
When silence is all he sees
I did not know what was missing
I only knew how to get through
I did not know I needed shelter
I was just learning what children do
I was small inside the chaos
Trying to make the pieces fit
Some wounds do not feel like wounds
Until you grow old enough to name them
There was fire in the window
And panic in the air
But what I remember most
Is how no one had been there
There was blood on the floorboards
And stitches where I fell
But pain felt almost normal
When care was hard to tell
I was not trying to be reckless
I was reaching for the world
A boy without a map
Still deserves to be a child
I did not know what was missing
I only knew how to get through
I did not know I needed shelter
I was just learning what children do
I was small inside the chaos
Trying to make the pieces fit
Some wounds do not feel like wounds
Until you grow old enough to name them
Now I see the shape behind it
The cracks before the break
The loneliness I carried
Before I knew its name
And I feel grief for that child
Not shame for what he did
He was only trying to survive
Inside the life he lived
There was still a softness in me
Still a hope I had not lost
Before the world grew colder
Before I learned the cost
I did not know what was missing
But now I understand
I was not broken for needing
A safer place to land
I was small inside the chaos
But the story did not end
Some wounds begin in silence
And healing starts when we name them
Before I knew what was missing
I was already learning pain
Now I am learning gently
That child deserves his name