Gifts of words and acceptance, empty boxes and past monsters

Perhaps without the giver even realising it, I was given a beautiful gift the other day. It was dropped into my lap, perfectly wrapped and formed, quite accidentally; a gift of words, and the acceptance that came with those words.

I hope that the giver of that gift does not mind me borrowing some of his words, and the courage that came from that acceptance,  in order to write about them.

Life, unfortunately, for whatever reason, does not deal us all an even hand. When something traumatic happens to someone as a child, it can dramatically alter the way in which they experience parts of their life. It altered mine.

When we are young, we are gifted a box, a wonderful empty box that we can fill up full of all those things that spark our curiosity, large and small. Young people, through childhood and early adulthood, spend time filling up that box full of things that interest them, that define them. They spend time expanding their minds, examining their interests. They pack that box as full as they wish.

For me, I did not. I could not. My childhood and teenage years were a combination of mental numbness and physically exhausting myself so as to be able to sleep through the night. It was a time for existing, not exploring. It was about enduring. I was aware of that box, I knew it was there, but it was brushed past, caressed sadly with a tired and longing finger at the end of another exhausting day.

When I turned 18, I escaped NZ. It was the best thing I could ever have done, but it wasn't a magical fix for that which had come before, and it didn't fill that empty box. It just gave me the space to be, before coming back to begin to deal with what I had left behind. And since then, bit by bit, piece by little piece, i've worked through the mess of that childhood.

But that box of things, the box of things that should have been full of what interested me, of what defined me, remained, for the best part, pretty empty. There were traces of things in there, things that I had dropped in in passing. Little post-it notes, stuck on the side, of things that had appealed, things about which I had said "Yes, I like you, but right now, I cannot take the time to seek more".

The wonderful Bee described it to me as reclaiming our lost childhood joy, which I think is a beautiful way to describe it. I have always adored sitting and listening to people speak about something they are passionate about, something that sits inside their personal box. You can feel that childhood joy and glee when they speak, the pure energy that rolls off them. 

I can't wait to start expanding out more of those post-it notes. There are quite a few of them. Writing this is the start of fulfilling one of them. I feel like I'm ready to start exploring.