You Are Enough

Sometimes I wish I could go back to when I was a kid.

Before the world got heavy. Before I learned how to hide my feelings behind forced smiles and polite lies. Before I started measuring my worth by how much I could give, fix, or prove.

I wish I could find that small version of me — the one who still believed love was simple, that people stayed, that being herself was enough — and tell her, you don’t have to try so hard.

You don’t have to be perfect.

You don’t have to make everyone proud.

You don’t have to carry everyone else’s pain just to feel like you matter.

Somewhere along the way, I started believing I had to earn love — that I had to perform to deserve it. But I wish someone had told me earlier that being human was enough. That just existing — messy, emotional, imperfect — was okay.

If I could sit beside that little girl now, I’d brush the hair from her face and whisper,

You are enough.

You always were.

You just forgot for a while.

And maybe that’s what healing really is — remembering what the world made you forget.