I have a box.

This box is where, for so long, I have kept ghosts –– parts of my past that I have chosen to live apart from, pieces of myself that I cannot pretend are not a part of what has made me the person that I am today.

As I have grown from my youth, I have learned that some parts of myself will never be easy to understand - I have dents and scratches and tears and I am stained in more than a few places. As I start to come into adulthood, I have reconciled these same blemishes to be simply that: blemishes. I have chosen for them to neither define me nor to determine the person I want to become.

I rarely open this box.

The problem with ghosts is that they know secrets. They hide out in the recesses of your mind, watching as you live your life and slowly forget that they could be real. Ghosts will always haunt; whether in your dreams or just floating through your mindless mundane musings, ghosts will always find a way to come back.

I am haunted.

For so long I believed that my box was sealed, a permanent reprieve from the ghosts I had thought that I had buried. Thoughts and feelings and words that have longed to be said, tears that are forced back, they are all suddenly there, choking me. I challenge this ghost, this part of my past that hurt me. I challenge them to fight me, to break me down, to destroy me.

I have often wondered if other people have gone through the same battles as me, if they've ever been betrayed by those who were supposed to protect them, by those sworn to save them. I wonder if anyone else had ever been abandoned, left to learn how to grow up - a girl too young to be considered a woman with a father struggling to keep it all together and a brother too young to understand what was happening.

I will not run scared.

For so long I have believed that this box was meant to stay shut, meant to keep all of the bad inside, meant to act as the last line of defense between these ghosts and me. I have encountered them many times - when a moment of vulnerability overcomes me or when I find myself searching for answers I have never received. I often fall prey to false hope, to a belief that things can be different, that ghosts can change.

I will no longer be that naive. Too often have I left myself exposed to their games and their wicked ways; too often have I been tempted by their promise of a better dream, a brighter tomorrow that I could never get to on my own.

But I am not that little girl anymore.

I am a fighter.