I remember the cupboard first.
It wasn’t just a place. It was a world. Four walls and no window, barely enough room to sit up straight. My legs tucked into themselves like I was trying to fold myself out of existence. I didn’t cry. Not then. Crying would’ve meant someone won, and I didn’t know who I was trying to beat yet. Maybe the dark. Maybe them. Maybe me.
You see, when people ask me about trauma, they expect drama. But the truth of it is silence. The kind that settles in your bones and never quite shakes out, no matter how loud the world gets later. They think the worst part was being hit, or burned, or touched wrong. It wasn’t. The worst part was the pause after. The way you’re left to make sense of something no child should have to hold.
There’s no ceremony when a child loses their innocence. No warning sign. It’s small. A hand that lingers. A threat behind a smile. A door that closes and doesn’t open again until something has already been taken. I remember the light from the crack underneath. The shadow of footsteps pacing. I used to pretend I was invisible. It was the only thing that kept me sane.
I lived in a war zone, but the weapons were silence, guilt, and fear. No headlines. No soldiers. Just a boy and the people who should’ve loved him.
I remember lying awake wondering if I was broken, if everyone else had some secret code that made them lovable, safe, normal. I didn’t have it. I had rage instead. And shame. So much shame it could’ve filled the cupboard a thousand times over.
I think people assume we forget. That time erases. It doesn’t. It carves. It etches. It leaves graffiti on your soul that no amount of healing wipes clean. But what time can’t erase, truth can name. And when you name it, you begin to own it.
I’m not writing this for pity. I’m writing it because the story deserves air. Not every survivor gets to speak. And for years, I didn’t. I let the story fester in silence. I wore it like a second skin. Even in my successes, it was there — the boy in the cupboard, the scared child in the wrong hands, the kid screaming into a world that didn’t answer.
But now I write it down. Not to be heard. But to be free.
I’m not whole. I may never be. But I am honest. And for a boy who grew up in silence, that’s its own kind of miracle.