018.

There's a piece of my story I'm not ready to tell. 

I know for sure this piece happend, for it's what I remember out of everything. It's the piece that haunts me the most. The piece my brain decided I should have on a loop for all of my adolescents, all of puberty, all through early adulthood, all through age 29. 

It's this piece that I've told no one, except my therapist.

I can't tell my friends. Not even the closest of them all. That never judge, never doubt, never question. I can't say and it is eating me alive. It has been slowly eating away at my soul for 20 plus years. 

I think it's the piece that is holding me back from claiming this as my story. The piece that refuses to see this as my truth. I want to say it. I want to scream it. Because for my healing, speaking it gives me the power, the control, the life, the voice, the spirit back. But I can't. I can't because I can't share this piece. 

That and because we don't talk about it. We just don't talk about it. Those of us who carry it end up allowing it to crush our very souls because we carry it alone. No one wants to acknowledge. No one wants to hear it. No one wants to confront it. 

And you don't understand just now invalidating, dismissive, and isolating that is. Not until you've felt it yourself.