Sometimes I imagine my trauma like an iPhone.
You know how when you delete something, it doesn’t go away? It simply moves to the “Recently Deleted” folder for 30 days, waiting to be permanently erased.
But in my case, the folder never empties.
The memories don’t expire.
They sit there—quietly, relentlessly—looming in the background of my existence. Tethered to me. Etched into my skin, into my thoughts, into the empty spaces I try to fill with newness. Even when I’ve run far, far away from the literal house, the fragments remain.
It’s been more than 15 years.
But they’re still there.
Still living in the folders of my mind.
Still clinging.
Still looping.
Still waiting to press play.
And I’ve been trying—God, I’ve been trying—to figure out how to delete them. How to purge the pain. To forget. To outrun. But maybe that’s where I’ve gone wrong all along.
Maybe these fragments, these pieces of my past that I can’t seem to shake off, aren’t meant to be deleted.
Maybe they’re not waiting to be forgotten.
Maybe, they’re just waiting for me.
Waiting the way I used to.
Like that little girl sitting on the pavement, cradling her Bratz doll, waiting for a father who would never come.
That’s how the trauma sits now.
Still.
Patient.
Present.
And I keep hoping it’ll disappear, that healing means vanishing—but it doesn’t. It lingers. It lives.
And now, I sit in this room I once dreamed of having.
My own space. My bed. My silence.
The thing I longed for most growing up.
But even here, even in this sacred space, I feel it.
I feel the ache. The loneliness. The contradiction.
I have everything I once prayed for
And still, I find myself craving the heavy closeness I once hated. The overcrowded bed. The body heat. The burden. The noise.
The chaos that once suffocated me now feels familiar.
And it breaks me to admit: even when I finally get what I’ve always wanted, I still don’t know how to hold it. I still don’t know how to feel joy in it. I still don’t know how to rest.
So what then?
What am I even working toward?
This fragment—this one here—it’s not poetic or hopeful. It’s not wrapped in metaphor or softened with reflection.
It’s just honest.
And maybe a little hopeless.
Some houses may be too damaged to fix.
Some rooms may stay unfinished forever.