To the little girl in me

To The Little Girl In Me:

You scare me.  You are so young.  You are a thing that exists only in emotions and feelings.  You have no words for this writer's hand to scribe.  I don't know how to grow and give voice to a girl who cannot even speak. 

I know you are young, because I cannot remember a time when I did not steel myself to this world.  A time that I didn't know that emotions and feelings got you nowhere and that they were better off shoved down deep.  I can't remember when I didn't take life's jabs and pretend they didn't hurt; a time when I didn't equate bearing pain to being strong.

I see you there in the corner of myself.  In that place I do not want to look.  I see you in all your raw emotions: anger, sadness, fear - deathly fear, and the dark lack of words that surrounds you.

It is in you and your corner in which you hide that the monsters lie.

They lie there scratching like a thing behind a door.....scratching, scratching, scratching. 

It is you and the monsters that make me fear intimacy in all of its connotations. 

When you hid you took Intimacy with you.  You locked it up tight with you and the monsters. 

To free one is to free all. 

I don't know how to free you though. 

I get close to you and I hear you crying, I see your wordless darkness, I feel you cower into a ball, so I do what you couldn't and I run.  I run away from you, that place, that darkness that surrounds you. 

But my running isn't working.  Your cries are getting louder.  You want out of your darkened prison and away from the monsters.

I just don't know how to do that.  You taught me to bury the pain and burying the pain means that I bury you too. 

So little girl, I know you are there.  I just don't know how to pick you up and bring you back home so you can grow.