A Moment in My Life – Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Viola Davis shared in an interview on 60 Minutes that although she has accomplished so much in three decades with much hard work, she has achieved tremendous success and fame. Yet, even with all her accolades, she still has to remind herself that she is no longer poor and no longer that helpless young girl who came from poverty, inexperienced and just starting out.
Her message sparked something in me. For the first time, I realized that all my life, I, too, have been struggling to overcome the person I was before I became the person I wanted to be. Until she verbalized her challenge, I didn’t know any better. I figured it was my demons that I had to deal with for the rest of my life. I never shared this with anybody. I didn’t think to tell someone because it’s ingrained into my being. I accepted it for what it was—memories of my past—and dismissed it when it surfaced. However, it was more than memories. It was like seeing yourself in a movie flubbing your lines, tripping over nothing, and falling, making a spectacle of yourself in front of the whole school. That’s a devastating scene for any kid USA. Compile that scene with all the other memories you have of moments you are not proud of, and imagine them looming over you for eternity.
Rarely a day goes by when the younger me doesn’t surface. I’ve been an adult for decades now, yet that little girl continues to peek out from time-to-time with her shyness, inadequacies, and naive judgment calls. She desired to be noticed by her family and loved for who she was and allowed a voice. She takes me down memory lane of moments I had with my mother that I would rather forget. Moments that defined the person I was, but not the person I wanted to be so bad. The old saying “Words are sharper than a sword” is so true. You can heal from a physical wound, and you may forget where that wound was if there were no scars left behind. However, words scar you within and reside in your memories forever, and you don’t even need to worry about renewing your subscription.
As much as I have changed and improved, scenes from that little girl’s world surface reminding me she’s still a huge part of me. Some of her challenges, which I had hoped would have been a success story by now, try if I might, those moments continue to loom over me as if it were an unobtainable fantasy.
I’ve moved on. I think I did well in becoming the person I am. I have a long road ahead with much to accomplish, but I am way better off than when I was that little girl. The younger me’s memories make me cringe at times, but I wouldn’t change anything even if I could. With all her imperfections, hurts, sensitivities, and aspirations, that little girl made me the person I am today. She taught me the areas I needed to work on to become the person I dream of becoming. Because of who she was, I am more empathetic to others. I can appreciate that little girl of my past, all she went through, and I will love her more than ever before because she deserves that. We have to cherish our memories—the good along with the bad. I have a life goal to reframe the bad memories with a success story. We are who were are, and we all have our younger selves living within us. Who we were never leaves us, even if we try to forget, but do we ever forget?
