Some people remember childhood like a photo album.
Birthday cakes.
Laughter.
Bike rides.
Sunlight through the window.
I remember the inside of a cupboard.
The cold floor.
The silence.
The way the air felt heavy, even when I was small.
I wasn’t being punished.
I was just being kept quiet.
Out of sight.
Out of mind.
That was my childhood.
Not a place of growth, but a place of disappearance.
The First Place I Learned to Disappear
The door would close.
The hallway light would vanish.
And it would just be me and the dark.
Sometimes I cried.
Sometimes I just held my breath.
But always, I knew the rule.
Don’t make noise. Don’t need anything. Don’t be a problem.
That’s how I learned to survive.
And survival became my personality.
What That Does to a Kid
When your early life teaches you that love is conditional,
you learn to perform for it.
You learn to smile through discomfort.
To charm your way into safety.
To anticipate everyone’s needs except your own.
And later, people call you manipulative.
Or attention-seeking.
Or intense.
But what they don’t see is that you were just trying not to be locked away again.
I Don’t Talk About It for Pity
I talk about it so I can finally stop performing.
Because even now,
as an adult,
as someone who’s been dragged across every headline,
I still sometimes sit in silence when I’m scared.
I still brace for rejection.
I still feel the echo of that cupboard when someone walks away.
But now, I see it.
And seeing it means I can stop living by it.
I Am Not That Child Anymore
He’s still in me.
But I protect him now.
I speak when I’m afraid.
I reach out when I feel alone.
I write things down instead of burying them.
And I let myself want connection without assuming I have to earn it first.
That’s not healing.
That’s rebuilding.
Final Thought
I didn’t grow up with safety.
Or softness.
Or the kind of love that holds you without conditions.
But I am learning how to create those things now.
I don’t want revenge on the past.
I want peace.
And that starts by saying,
out loud,
clearly:
I didn’t have a childhood. I had a cupboard.
And I’m not hiding in it anymore.
Was Raised by Systems That Couldn’t Hold Me