One time, for rolling my eyes as a 14-year-old girl, I was forced to sleep on a concrete floor in a garage, next to a refrigerator that, somehow, made the floor feel colder than it already was. Worse than that, my adopted family slept in beds right beside me. Warm, cozy, snoring; all the things I wasn't, they were.
This vacation wasn't the worst thing I've been through, but it was immediately made worse when, while hiking the following day, I was forced to complete my climb up a mountain in flip flops, which were useless, so I resorted to going barefooted. I climbed and climbed and climbed, wearing the outfit that was chosen for me for humiliation, the "shoes" that were chosen for me to inflict the most amount of pain.
I went back to where we were staying that night and, again, was put on the floor. I cried silently to myself, questioned my existence, hoped to be saved by someone. I would have done anything to get off that floor. Spoiler: I was never saved; no one ever came for me.
Now, as an adult with children of my own, I find myself missing the floor sometimes. When I feel stressed, when I feel nervous or anxious or scared, I catch myself headed to the floor again. I know what you're probably thinking, reader. "What a crazy person for putting themselves in the same position that traumatized them earlier in life!" I challenge that thought with this: Imagine the horrors I faced that, while laying on that cold garage floor, feet bloody and aching, made me think, "Well, this isn't the worst thing that's happened to me, I'll just make the best of it..."
~Yours Truly
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