Thank You. Love, Me.

I was 16 years old. Sitting alone in the middle of an international airport. I knew my dad would catch up to me soon. I’d just escaped a plane ride to a destination I greatly feared. I had every intention of bucking up, bravely enduring the trip and what was to come after, but in the end, the fear was too great, I had to get off. He had followed me, I know he had, grabbing our bags in the process. I knew I was in trouble.

I was ashamed, still afraid, trying to get control of a situation I had zero control over. You see just 24 hours earlier my parents had told me I’d be going to Georgia, to a therapeutic wilderness camp. I’d looked it up online, researched my fate, made peace with it. But as the hours passed, It felt too scary, I wanted to be brave, but I couldn’t.

Back at home after our first attempt to go, the fear overtook me. I sobbed, I self harmed, I screamed a million obscenities at everyone in my path. I was 16. Bigger than a child, but yet still a kid. And I was scared. Scared I would never make it through a wilderness camp, scared of what life looked like ahead of me, scared I would never live a life of peace and joy.

So much in my past that makes me cringe to remember, that causes tears to roll down my cheeks when I write about it. “Who even was she?”, I wonder aloud. “Thank God I’ve grown,” I commend myself, “I’ll just forget about it all, leave it in the past, cover it with this newer model of myself. One that is a little more mentally stable, more sure of herself, more socially acceptable”.

God, no I hope I never do that. I hope I never forget, never stop sharing, never stop thanking little me for everything that has come before now. I’ve been fighting since I was a teeny little thing. Fighting for a better life, for hope that I knew deep down existed. Battling mental illness, and traumas that rocked my little epathetic self. How brave I have been. How dedicated to my future, to the real me that lives deep down inside, to exposing the mess and embracing the truth. So brave.

It’s so much easier to blame the past isn’t? Or to mourn everything that the past could have been had we only done something different. But we didn’t. We have done the very best we’ve ever been able to do in order to survive. The “me” we are today has everything to do with all that came before, the person we’ve been, the choices we’ve made. We are they and they are us.

I’ve been brave. I’ve been strong. All that I am has brought me to this place.

Thank You. Love, me.

? Marisa Kinney photography

I’ll leave you with this, my friends:

“I am the Lord your God, I go before you now
I stand beside you, I’m all around you
Though you feel I’m far away,
I’m closer than your breath
I am with you, more than you know”