No matter how much I heal,
no matter how far I come,
the child I once was will always walk beside me—a ghost of what should have been.
A shadow of the childhood social services should have saved,
but didn’t.
They had chances.
I know that now, not from memory, but from the black-and-white records I’ve fought to hold in my hands.
Pages of notes, reports, missed red flags.
So many signs, so many cries for help softened into silence by people who decided to wait.
“Let’s monitor.”
“Let’s reassess.”
“Let’s give it time.”
But time ran out.
Day after day passed,
and each one was lived in fear.
Alone.
Confused.
Telling myself what I was going through must be normal, because if it wasn’t, why did they keep leaving me there?
Reading my own history now is like watching someone drown while lifeboats circle but never reach out.
I see the moments they could have pulled me in.
The times they saw the water rising.
But they didn’t move fast enough.
And I slipped beneath the surface.
My childhood is a whisper now, faded, fragile, almost unreal.
But the woman standing here today?
She is real.
She is stronger.
And she holds space for that little girl in a way no one else ever did.
I carry her with me, not in shame, but with love.
Because she survived.
Even when no one came.
thegirlspeaks.uk 