As a grown woman with a career, a family, and a very full, beautiful life I find it difficult to talk to people about my deep discontent with love I wasn’t given as a little girl. In fact, I can talk myself right out of my feelings quicker than I could share them with anyone.

You’re grown. Shouldn’t you be over that stuff by now?

Obviously it wasn’t that bad, you seem fine.

Why dig up the past? Isn’t life hard enough without having to “relive” the past?

But then I stop and think, I could still cry for that little girl. That girl who was punished with silence when she was in trouble and whose parents ignored her when she came home from school ~ just to teach her a lesson. They didn’t know she was coming home from a day in school where no one spoke to her, except her teacher. They didn’t know that a seed of loneliness was planting itself deep inside her. A feeling of lack and less-than was festering, creating a sadness that no one could fix.

They didn’t know I had a hole in my soul that nothing could fill, although I tried.

Oh, I tried. I tried to fill it with all things pleasurable only to feel emptier and insatiable.

I could still cry for that little girl who just wanted someone to care deeply for her ~ and tell her ~ and show her ~ and believe in her.

I could still cry for that girl who looked for love in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people, for all the wrong reasons.

I could still cry for that girl who is mostly long forgotten about now.