For a long time, I didn’t know his name. I didn’t even know he was still there — tucked away behind the survival mechanisms, the silence, the carefully built walls that kept me from falling apart. But he was. Waiting. His name is Aaron. He is my inner child. And for most of my life, he carried things no child should ever have to hold. I met him properly through therapy. Not like some fantasy character or abstract idea, but as someone real — part of me, forgotten but never gone. We’ve cried together. We’ve sat in silence.
Sometimes we just… remember. What I’ve learned is this: he didn’t need to be fixed. He needed to be found. This post isn’t just about Aaron. It’s about the power of reconnecting with the parts of ourselves we were taught to ignore. It’s about healing — not by erasing the past, but by listening to the child who lived through it. This is the beginning of Aaron’s place in this journal. He belongs here now, because he always did.
At first, it was awkward — like bumping into someone you were supposed to protect but had somehow forgotten. I didn’t know how to talk to him. I stumbled through it, unsure and exposed, like I was trespassing in my own memory. He didn’t greet me. He glowered. Twelve years old, fists clenched — not physically, but emotionally balled up in the corner of my mind, radiating fury. And he had every right to be angry. He was holding onto things no child should carry. Rage. Shame. Silence. He had been standing there in the dark, waiting for someone — me — to show up and finally let him scream.
And I found the key. It wasn’t a lecture, a promise, or some tidy therapeutic breakthrough. It was a word. Sorry. A real one. Not the sorry you say when you spill something — the kind that breaks you open. The kind that tastes like truth in your mouth. The kind that comes from realising just how long you’ve been gone, and who paid the price for your absence. I told him I was sorry. More sorry than I had ever been about anything. And that’s when he looked at me. Really looked at me.
He knew things I had forgotten. Aaron held the parts of the story I couldn’t bear to remember — fragments of pain and fear that my adult mind had buried so deep they felt like fiction. But to him, they were vivid. Immediate. Real. He didn’t just remember the trauma — he remembered how it felt. He carried the ache of silence, the panic in the bones, the unspeakable terror that had no words at the time. And now, face to face, he needed to tell me.
So I started talking to him. I placed a teddy bear — a loved one, worn from years past — on a small stool my uncle had made for me when I was a boy. That stool became his space. That bear, his presence. It was the first time I made room for Aaron in the present. And then, I spoke. I told him everything. I let the weight fall out of me like stones. And I listened when he spoke back — not in words, but in memories, in emotion, in knowing. We began to look at things together. And slowly, I learned what peace could feel like.
Aaron taught me the truth — not just what had happened, but how it felt. He showed me why I’d been so scared, why I’d retreated, why I was haunted by nightmares even when I was awake. He didn’t drag me through it. He walked beside me — into the darkness. And together, we started switching on the lights. It has restored something at the core of me — something I didn’t know I was missing until I felt it return.
Getting to know Aaron hasn’t just helped me understand the past. He helped me live the present with more clarity, more kindness, and more truth. I understand now how to love him. I can feel when he’s scared. I don’t push it away anymore — I listen. I ask what he needs. And often, it’s something as simple as being held, being heard, being told: you didn’t deserve any of it.
His is a voice I can hear again. And it helps me navigate all the things we face now — not alone, but together. Hand in hand.
If you’re reading this… and you’ve never met your Aaron — or whoever lives quietly inside you — I want you to know: they’re still there. They’ve been waiting. Maybe angry. Maybe scared. Maybe silent. But they haven’t given up on you. When you’re ready, they’ll be ready too. And they have so much to tell you.
a blog less ordinary 