When I landed in Norway, I was already a hurt person.
I was carrying the wound of childhood trauma. I did not know it yet, because it looked like a normal life that fate had dished out for me. Looking back, it was one filled with weird memories. Ones that a child should not have. Ones that should have stood out more than they did.
Being in a new environment taught me to look at it with fresh eyes and call it what it was: a bad childhood.
Like all stories, there are the good ones and the bad ones. The bad ones made life unbearable. And they made the good person look bad, because they had to pick up the slack left behind. That left very little time for them to be the good parent they actually were.
It may also not have helped that the good person in this story had their own unhealed trauma. That may have contributed to the bad things in life. It was not until I was far, far away that I learned to see it for what it was: a person really trying their best with what they were given.
But here is what I struggle with.
The saying forgive and forget is for the compassionate ones. Where was their compassion for us—the children who were hurting?
Why can we not put the blame where it really should be: on the shoulders of the adults?
The victims are not the ones who should have to forgive and forget. We already have enough on our shoulders without that being placed on us too. We already have more than enough to unpack, more than enough pain to wash away, more than enough to try to stop feeling.
What we have always wanted was the love and warmth that every child longs for from their parents.
That is what I am still learning to grieve. Not the childhood I had—but the one I did not.
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