Rediscovering Belonging

It may have taken a while to get here,
and it may have included
many unexpected detours,
but I'm beginning to reach a place
where I can love my story.

I have weathered the storms,
maybe not always as
gracefully as I would have liked,
but I have succeeded.
I may have scraped my knees
from crawling amidst the gusts.
I may have limped along
on weary, blistered feet,
but I made it all the same.

My journey has been
complex and convoluted;
full of adamant denial,
I could not heal my past until
my subconscious knowledge
was confirmed.

Through childhood,
even with some memories
of my original parents
and of my time in foster care,
I never perceived myself
as a survivor of trauma
or even as a person with
a fear of abandonment.
In order to keep my sanity,
I managed to deny
all of the facts
and all of the evidence.

So my healing began
some time after January 2010,
when my fragile bubble
of false reality had burst.
That was the beginning
of the hardest part of my life.
To this day, I don't know how
I managed to get by.
And yet, here I am
10 years later
having completed college,
having hiked the Appalachian Trail,
and having backpacked through Europe.

And now,
when I think about the trials of the past,
I realize that they will be the reasons
that I can connect with so many children.
It may not have been pleasant,
it may have been downright terrifying,
but now I see those experiences as liberating,
because now I can see where I belong and why.
I belong in classrooms helping teachers and students alike,
for I have been the neglected student
and the shunned student.
I know where I belong because
I know what I wished to see
from my teachers who,
in their inability to understand me,
let me struggle all alone.

But they could not know the weight of my burdens.
How could they when I never even
admitted to myself that I had any?
It may have felt like the world
never made a place for me,
but I am about to make a place for myself within the world.
With the goal being to ensure that the world
begins to make a place for all people, for all children.