Pain is a curious thing. I would not say I am past it, but I know I am much farther than I was when I started. Clarity like this will make you realize that you weren’t living before. That only now you are really living. I hate that a bit. A part of me ires those who’ve simply gotten to live. Unburdened and unburied. I don’t wish to change the past; wanting what I can never have will only do more harm. But I mourn for those years. For that little girl. For myself. I didn’t deserve the harm, but I know I felt like I did. Up until recently, there was a burrowed, deep-seated, certainty that I had been atrocious in my last life, and that I was now making up for it. I needed there to be a reason. I needed a way to accept all that happened, and all that continued. But I think the harder truth is that I didn’t deserve it, and there was no reason. Harm just happened. I am neither a magnet to misfortune, nor a darkened soul in need of retribution. I am just a person, who learned to exist in harmful conditions and to never speak up about them. Those habits, that nurturing, primed me for further harm. Forever finding and accepting pain, as I learned to do. So I am going to work to unlearn that. Because I foresee a life past the now for the first time. I am not just today; I am not simply a weighted, darkened soul. I am more.