Dragging Me Backwards
They say time only moves forward—
but that’s a lie my body knows better than my brain.
Because some days,
I swear I feel the hands of yesterday
wrapped around my ankles,
dragging me backwards
through years I worked hard to outrun.
I’m grown now…
with bills and keys and a mailbox full of things that pretend I’m whole.
But inside,
there’s still that small girl
with knees pressed into carpet,
breathing like she’s praying,
counting the seconds between footsteps in the hallway
like her life depends on getting to ten
before the doorknob turns.
And it always turned
before she got to ten.
Memory is a cruel magician—
pulling me onto the stage,
spotlight hot against my cheeks,
whispering “Watch closely.”
Then it saws me in half again.
Suddenly I’m back there,
in the house where shadows knew my name.
But not all of it was shadow.
Because sometimes—
right in the middle of the terror—
a softer memory slips in,
like mercy with a scent.
Strawberry soap.
My Nana’s hands washing my face,
the sweet smell of berries rising warm from the suds.
Five years old,
ten years old—
the same gentle fragrance,
untouched by anything dark.
A memory that still lands soft
no matter how many times I visit it.
Magic was never a trick;
it was survival—
architecture I built from scraps of hope.
Blankets became shields,
stuffed animals a sworn army,
my imagination a whole universe
where fear couldn’t reach me.
But here’s the part that drags me hardest:
I’m an adult now,
yet when the memory reel starts spinning,
it doesn’t ask permission,
doesn’t check my age,
doesn’t care that I pay rent
and know how to hold eye contact
and can talk about “resilience”
without my voice shaking.
It just hits play.
And suddenly I’m small again—
tiny, confused, desperate—
watching the scene roll out in familiar colors
as if it all happened yesterday
instead of in a lifetime I barely survived.
People say,
“Why can’t you just move on?”
As if trauma is a suitcase you can leave at the airport.
As if the past isn’t a living thing
with claws sharp enough
to reach across decades.
But listen—
every time I get pulled backward,
I also pull myself forward.
Because that girl I was,
the one who spun worlds out of fear
and made magic out of nothing,
she didn’t die.
She didn’t give up.
She stayed alive inside me
like a pilot light,
waiting for the moment
I’d be strong enough
to understand what she lived through.
So when memory drags me,
I drag back.
I reach for her—
the small me,
the scared me,
the clever, imaginative survivor me—
and I tell her,
“I’m here now.
You can rest.”
And sometimes,
to remind us both that not everything hurts,
I breathe in slowly
and let myself remember
that strawberry scent—
the one memory that never bruises,
the tenderness that kept a little girl alive
long enough to grow into the adult
who can speak this poem.
Healing isn’t forgetting.
It’s remembering without disappearing.
It’s letting the reel play
but refusing to let it run the whole show.
It’s growing older
and finally loving the child
who kept you alive long enough
to stand here,
in full voice,
unbroken,
and free enough
to drag back.
Comments
Post a Comment