BENEATH THE SHADOWS OF SIX

Beneath the quiet hours, those fragile moments when the world falls silent and the night feels heavier than usual, my truth rises to the surface. It sits in my chest like a secret burning to be spoken. A story too sensitive for most ears, too easily judged by people who have never carried a wound this deeply. But it lives inside me, shaping the way I breathe, the way I move, the way I yearn.

And the truth is… I am lonely.

Not the kind of loneliness cured by company or conversation, but a loneliness that sinks into the bones. The kind that wraps around the heart like fog, soft, but suffocating. People see me smiling, encouraging them, offering comfort, lifting them with words I cannot lift myself with. I’m the one who cheers others up, the one who listens, the one who tells them, “You will be okay.”

But inside, I’m the one who is crumbling quietly.

Inside, I’m the one who whispers to herself, “When will I be okay?”

I have become an expert at pretending. I know how to steady my voice when it wants to break. I know how to smile when my heart is tired. I know how to walk with purpose even when my soul is dragging itself through the shadows of my past. And in the middle of helping everyone else, I often forget that I am the one who is still bleeding inside.

And then there is the part of me that hurts in silence, the part that yearns to be a woman. Not just a body that bleeds every month, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for more than a month, sometimes for 43 days nonstop until I feel like I’m losing pieces of myself. Yes, I know how to bleed. My body has taught me that too well. But being a woman is more than bleeding.

I want to feel what women feel.

I want to be held like a woman.

Longed for like a woman.

Cherished, protected, embraced, not hurt, not broken, not feared.

I want to know how it feels to be touched with love, not violence.

To be wanted with tenderness, not force.

To be seen as whole, not damaged.

But my past sits between me and that dream like a wall of shadows.

Just the thought of intimacy makes my body tremble. My mind freezes. My soul recoils. Every attempt to imagine closeness pulls me back to those dark memories I never asked for. My body remembers what I wish it could forget. My skin remembers hands that were stolen, not hands that held. My heart remembers fear before it remembers love.

And sometimes, when I stand alone in my room or stare at myself in the mirror, I feel like I am still six years old. Six, the age when innocence should have been mine. Six, the age when the world should have felt safe. But at six, I was introduced to a cruelty no child should ever know. At six, I learned fear, not trust. At six, my childhood ended, and a lifetime of trembling began.

People talk to me like I’m grown. They see an adult woman standing in front of them. But inside, the part of me that needed protection never grew up. That child is still there, frozen, scared, confused, asking why her innocence was ripped away. She never got to heal. She never got to rest. She still hides in the quiet corners of my heart, clutching the pieces of what she lost.

So, when I say I want to feel like a woman, it is not vanity.

It is longing.

It is grief.

It is the desire to reclaim something stolen from me before I even understood what it meant.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be held gently. To feel someone, wrap their arms around me not to hurt or claim, but simply to hold me, to remind me that I am safe now. I imagine being loved in a way that doesn’t make my body tense or my mind panic. I imagine stillness, soft, warm stillness, where my past can’t reach me.

But healing is slow.

Healing is layered.

Healing is the daily battle between wanting to feel alive and being afraid to feel anything at all.

Still, beneath the quiet hours, beneath the trembling, beneath the memories carved into my skin, there is a version of me that refuses to give up. A woman who wants to be free. A woman who wants to live, not just survive. A woman who yearns to step into her own body without fear. A woman who deserves softness, deserves gentleness, deserves love.

One day, I will reach her.

One day, the six-year-old inside me will feel safe enough to let go.

One day, my heart will stop shaking.

One day, I will not just bleed, I will feel.

I will know intimacy without fear, connection without trembling, love without remembering pain.

This chapter may be heavy, but it is not the end, it is the beginning of reclaiming the woman I was always meant to be.