destinylaharris

Tag: inner child

  • Between the Lines #6

    When the Night Whispers Your Name

    There’s something unsettling about hearing your name when no one said it.

    Maybe you’re lying in bed.

    Maybe the house is completely quiet.

    And for half a second, you could swear someone called you.

    Not loudly.

    Just enough to make you stop.

    Listen.

    Maybe even look over your shoulder.

    That was the thought behind When the Night Whispers Your Name.

    At least, that’s where it started.

    Because somewhere while writing it, the person whispering stopped being a ghost.

    And started becoming me.

    When the Night Whispers Your Name

    When the night whispers your name,

    I pretend

    I didn’t hear it.

    I’ve learned

    that some voices

    don’t belong

    to the living.

    Not because they’re ghosts.

    Because memory

    has a remarkable way

    of learning

    how to breathe.

    The daylight

    is kinder.

    It fills empty rooms

    with enough noise

    that I can almost believe

    I’ve become someone else.

    But night—

    night has always

    known the truth.

    It remembers

    every version of me

    I’ve tried

    to outgrow.

    The child

    who mistook silence

    for safety.

    The teenager

    who carried storms

    inside her ribs.

    The woman

    who still apologizes

    before she takes up space.

    They all answer

    when the darkness calls.

    I don’t.

    At least,

    I tell myself

    I don’t.

    But there are evenings

    when I catch myself

    looking over my shoulder

    because I could have sworn

    someone

    just said my name.

    Softly.

    The way people do

    when they love you.

    Or miss you.

    Or mourn you

    before you’re gone.

    Maybe that’s what

    the night has been

    trying to tell me.

    Not that I’m haunted.

    That I have spent

    so many years

    running from myself

    that even my own name

    sounds unfamiliar

    when spoken

    with kindness.

    When the night

    whispers your name,

    listen carefully.

    It may not be

    calling you backward.

    It may be asking

    whether you’ve finally

    become brave enough

    to turn around

    and meet

    the person

    who has been searching

    for you

    all along.

    I think there are certain versions of ourselves we spend years trying to leave behind.

    Not necessarily because we hate who we were.

    Sometimes we just don’t want to remember what that version of us had to carry.

    So we grow.

    We change.

    We get older.

    We build lives around everything that happened afterward.

    And eventually, we start telling ourselves that person doesn’t exist anymore.

    But I don’t think it works like that.

    I think every version of us leaves something behind.

    The child.

    The teenager.

    The person who was scared.

    The person who was angry.

    The person who survived something they didn’t have words for yet.

    They don’t disappear just because we become someone else.

    And sometimes, when everything gets quiet enough, we hear them.

    That’s why I wrote:

    Because memory
    has a remarkable way
    of learning
    how to breathe.

    Memory can feel incredibly alive.

    A smell can bring back a room you haven’t stood in for years.

    A song can bring back a person.

    A sentence can bring back a feeling you thought you’d forgotten.

    And sometimes you can be sitting perfectly still in the present while some part of you is somewhere else entirely.

    That’s its own kind of haunting.

    But I didn’t want this poem to end there.

    Because When the Night Whispers Your Name isn’t really a poem about being haunted by who you used to be.

    It’s about finally turning around.

    There’s a line toward the end that I think holds the entire poem:

    That I have spent
    so many years
    running from myself
    that even my own name
    sounds unfamiliar
    when spoken
    with kindness.

    Sometimes we become so accustomed to criticizing ourselves that kindness feels suspicious.

    Sometimes we’re much better at extending grace to the people we used to be than the person we are right now.

    And sometimes the version of ourselves we’ve been trying so hard to escape isn’t chasing us at all.

    Maybe she’s just waiting to be acknowledged.

    Maybe she wants someone to finally look at her without shame.

    Maybe she wants to hear her own name spoken gently.

    So perhaps when the night whispers your name, you don’t always have to run from it.

    Sometimes you can turn around.

    Sometimes you can listen.

    Sometimes you might discover that the thing you thought was haunting you…

    was simply a piece of yourself waiting for you to come back.

    Until next time,

    — Destiny

    P.S. If you could sit down with one past version of yourself for five minutes, which version would you choose—and what would you tell them?

  • Between the Lines #5: Monsters

    I used to think growing up meant learning that monsters weren’t real.

    Monsters

    As we got older,
    the monsters crept from under our beds
    to inside our heads.

    We stopped checking closets.

    Stopped leaving
    the hallway light on.

    Stopped pulling blankets
    over our faces
    because someone told us

    there was nothing there.

    And we believed them.

    For a while.

    We laughed
    at the children we used to be.

    Afraid of shadows.

    Afraid of footsteps.

    Afraid of something
    reaching from beneath the bed
    and grabbing our ankles.

    We didn’t know yet

    that monsters grow up too.

    They stop hiding
    beneath mattresses

    and start answering
    to ordinary names.

    Anxiety.

    Grief.

    Shame.

    Trauma.

    Loneliness.

    The voice that says
    everyone you love
    will eventually leave.

    The memory
    that waits until 2 a.m.
    to remind you
    it never really went anywhere.

    The fear
    that maybe you are difficult to love.

    The thought
    that everyone else
    was given instructions
    for being alive

    and somehow
    yours got lost.

    As children,

    we could run
    to another room.

    Climb into someone’s bed.

    Whisper,

    “I’m scared.”

    And sometimes
    that was enough.

    Someone would check the closet.

    Look beneath the bed.

    Turn on the light.

    Promise us

    nothing was there.

    God,

    I miss when fear
    could be proven wrong
    with a flashlight.

    Because now

    the monster knows my name.

    It knows my history.

    It knows exactly
    which memories
    to pull from the shelf

    when I am finally
    having a good day.

    It knows
    which insecurities
    still have teeth.

    It knows how to sound
    exactly like me.

    That’s the cruelest part.

    Eventually,

    you stop knowing

    which thoughts
    belong to you

    and which ones
    belong to the monster.

    So I became
    my own night-light.

    My own open door.

    My own voice
    in the darkness saying,

    “There’s nothing there.”

    Even when
    I wasn’t sure.

    Especially when
    I wasn’t sure.

    As we got older,

    the monsters crept
    from under our beds

    to inside our heads.

    And maybe growing up

    was never about
    discovering

    that monsters
    aren’t real.

    Maybe it was realizing

    no one else

    can check beneath the bed

    for us anymore.

    So now,

    when the darkness comes,

    I sit beside
    the frightened child
    still living inside me.

    I take her hand.

    I turn on the light.

    And together,

    we remind the monsters

    that this time—

    they’re the ones

    who should be afraid of us.

    Between the Lines

    When I was little, monsters were easy.

    Not necessarily less scary—but easier.

    They lived under beds.

    Inside closets.

    In dark hallways.

    Behind doors that looked completely harmless during the day but somehow became suspicious as hell once the lights went out.

    And when you were scared, you could call for someone.

    Someone bigger would come into the room, turn on the light, open the closet, look underneath the bed, and show you there was nothing there.

    Fear could be proven wrong.

    I think that’s what sits underneath this poem more than anything else.

    God, I miss when fear could be proven wrong with a flashlight.

    Because somewhere along the way, the monsters changed.

    They stopped having claws and shadows and glowing eyes.

    They became things like anxiety.

    Grief.

    Shame.

    Trauma.

    Loneliness.

    Memories.

    The things we tell ourselves when it’s late and everything feels heavier than it did during the day.

    And nobody can walk into the room and prove those things aren’t there.

    Nobody can shine a flashlight underneath your thoughts.

    That might be one of the cruelest parts of growing up.

    But while writing this poem, I realized something else.

    When I was a child, I needed someone else to turn on the light.

    Now I can do it myself.

    Not always.

    Not perfectly.

    And sometimes I turn it on with shaking hands.

    But I can sit beside the younger versions of myself who are still scared. I can remind them that we survived the things we once thought we wouldn’t. I can question the voice that tells me every fear is a fact simply because it sounds like my own.

    Maybe that’s part of growing up, too.

    Not becoming fearless.

    Not finally reaching some magical age where the monsters disappear.

    Just learning that when they come back, you don’t have to hide beneath the blankets anymore.

    You can turn on the light yourself.

    And maybe, eventually, the monsters learn to be afraid of you.

    Until next time,

    —Destiny

    P.S. What was the thing you were most afraid of in the dark when you were a kid?