05/25/2026
The child who never got to be a child did not grow up faster. They grew up sideways.
Parentification is not a compliment dressed in retrospect — it is the systematic replacement of a child’s interior life with the emotional labour of adults who should have known better.
You learned to read every room before you learned to read yourself. That is not maturity. That is survival wearing maturity’s clothes.
The wound is not that you were capable. The wound is that capability was the only version of you anyone made space for, and now as adult you are left to either repeat history or break the cycles to learn what works for you!