I was born into brokenness, a generational pattern on both sides of my family of people not believing in being whole or even chasing after wholeness. No one in my family, on either side was familiar with what being and living as a whole person meant, what it looked like. My example, my life example, was brokenness. The type of brokenness which on surface appeared like I had it all together, that I was a mass of perfection and knew what I was doing and who I was. But beneath the surface I was a mass of insecurity, doubt, fear and negativity; I was the sum of all those things for myself and all the insecurity, doubt, fear and negativity of generations before me.

Brokenness became like a curse.

Reflecting upon my childhood, I can’t think of one period where I thought highly of myself. Low self-esteem and sense of self has been my default for as long as I can remember. As a child, when I wasn’t hiding away from the world reading or writing, I was crouching from the world because I didn’t feel good enough, worthy of being loved or that I mattered. And the messaging I received from nearly everyone I interacted with reinforced my core beliefs.

When I was nine years old, my father took a trip to Lagos, Nigeria, his hometown. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Standing at the airport gate. Giving hugs. Being reassured he’d be back before I knew it. Being told to help my mother and that my role as the oldest all of a sudden was super important. I remember the car ride back home after the airport.

And I remember not seeing my father again until four years later.

I remember the silence that followed all those years, not knowing what was going on. I remember the many questions I had which were always silenced or ignored or slyly given a non-answer. I remember the many letters I sent my father and how those letters made me realize how much I loved writing. I remember the routine phone calls early in the morning before school. I remember being nine years old and shouldering the not knowing, the stress, the fatigue, the exhaustion, the inner turmoil my mother felt those four years. I remember feeling unloved, forgotten and discarded. I remember not being treated like a person, my childhood being prematurely snatched away from me, and being angry I wasn’t given the consideration of knowing. I remember being too in touch with my mother and her narcissistic tendencies and having no choice but to remain close by, to be her narcissistic supply, because she needed me. I remember the heavy weight of abandonment.

This was my version of brokenness. And this is the brokenness I’ve carried with me closely on my person, all these years. I carry a brokenness which is riddled with deep regret and a longing to understand why, why I wasn’t told then and why, still to this day, I’ve been offered no explanation for my father’s absence. How do you forgive and move forward when you have no understanding whatsoever? It’s no wonder why I struggled to see and love myself all this time. And it’s no wonder not seeing or loving myself translated to attracting people who didn’t see or love me either.

I often feel like a failure in terms of love and relationships because I am a massive failure in that regard. Almost all the relationships I’ve been in have been abusive, not physically, but in every other way imaginable otherwise — manipulation, gaslighting, stonewalling, verbal insults, nasty put downs, cheating, dishonesty. I was trying to fill a giant sized hole in my heart my father created when he left when I was a child. And because the feeling of abandonment made me feel unloved, unwanted and unimportant I only loved men who made me feel those exact emotions.

But at a certain point, brokenness became trite. Four years ago, six months away from graduating with my Masters degree, it was if something clicked or shifted within me. My awakening began at that point. I became acutely aware I didn’t know myself on any level. I knew intimately at that time, for the first time in my life, that who I was and who I had became was just a shell of the person I was. Instead I’d grown and matured to be the sum of the projections and indoctrination I’d been fed. Realizing I didn’t know myself was scary.

My awakening coincided with my first international trip to Spain in September. The same trip where everyone in my life, including my mother and father, thought I was crazy as hell.  But I felt called to go on that trip. My spirit called out to me and I answered. I don’t know that I wouldn’t be where I am now — in a place where I truly love and cherish myself, see myself as being wondrous, valuable, enough and mattering — had I not taken that trip.

And writing about my experience in Spain alone (I wrote about it here if you want to read) became the space where I began to heal a childhood and life as I’d come to know it as filled with brokenness. I wrote my way through healing. I wrote all the things. The things I was too ashamed to say out loud. The things I knew would sound bad if I said them out loud. So I wrote them instead.

I wrote while crying. I wrote while seething in anger. I wrote while depressed. I wrote while anxious. I wrote while suicidal.

Writing breathed new life into my despair and translated my despair into a hope I had not ever experienced. I’d become accustomed to only living expecting the other shoe to drop and expected to be left and expected to not be good enough and expected to being shitted on. To actually see life as being filled with opportunity for unlimited things to go right and well was a huge leap.

Brokenness used to be a generational curse, on both sides of my family, but I decided four years ago, inadvertently, it would stop with me. And nearly a year ago when I started therapy to begin my healing journey with a companion, it was another nod to saying it stopped with me as well. I’ve learned what it means to care for myself. I’ve learned that it’s okay to be selfish, to say no, to enact boundaries, to cherish myself by frequently and consistently checking-in on myself — psychologically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I’ve also learned how integral writing has been and will continue to be as I heal from all I’ve endured and all the wounds I’ve gathered, all the emotional trauma I’ve normalized but must, in some way, begin to make peace with. I see how writing has contributed directly to knowing my intrinsic value and seeing myself as beautiful and a valid and a needed contribution to this world.

It’s no mistake I was created to create and write. Our gifts breathe life into both ourselves and others. As I continue to heal, I hope to inspire others to heal, too. To step out on faith when it’s scariest, to confront the shadows of your soul. And to write. Write your entire way through it. Write your way through inching towards being whole.