hide and seek

there are loves that break you twice: once in the loving, and once in the remembering. when i was a child, my favorite sound in the world was the knock at the door that meant he was here. i used to sprint toward him with endless joy, screaming his name before he even stepped inside.

i threw myself into his arms every time. he was the fun uncle. the funny uncle. the one who sat with me while i listened to one direction for hours and let me talk about absolutely nothing like it was groundbreaking news. i wrote poems about him — real poems, the kind that only children can write, where adoration spills out in embarrassing, unfiltered abundance. he felt like christmas morning.

until i remembered.

the remembering didn’t slam into me all at once. it arrived slowly, like fog rising, revealing shapes i had lived beside but never fully seen. first, stories from neighbors — whispers about him looking at children in our building in ways adults shouldn’t. then, rumors about him and a teenage girl. each story tugged loose a thread, and my brain began to unspool the things it had tucked away for my own survival. the remembering came with fear. dissociation. guilt so heavy it felt like a second spine. and then more memories surfaced — the hide-and-seek games that ended with his hands somewhere they shouldn’t be, while everyone else hid. the videos we watched together, the ones that turned my stomach even back then. the trips to the bathroom that still live in my body, explaining why even now i have to prepare myself to walk into one.

every revelation felt like i was ruining something sacred. ruining the love. ruining my childhood. ruining him. when i was thirteen, he was living with us again. he was dating my friend’s mom. one night , i sat listening to whitney houston with the woman who gave birth to me, and i told her — not everything, just the part about the videos. i don’t remember how it came up, but i remember hoping it would be enough. that someone would say, “this is not okay,” and he would stop living in our house. he didn’t. nothing happened. so i learned not to bother saying more.

as i got older, every time he entered a room, my body revolted. my heart raced like something trapped. i avoided any room he was in. my nervous system felt like it was on the verge of exploding. when i finally tried to act “normal” after moving back home, he looked at me in front of my father and talked about the shape of my body. that moment still makes my skin crawl. a single comment, and suddenly my childhood was back in my throat, choking me.

during the metoo movement, the remembering sharpened. i was 16 and “dating” a 26 year old man, who told me it would be my fault if my uncle ever hurt anyone else because i didn’t report him. i already believed no one would do anything, i had an experience that confirmed it, so i swallowed the guilt and panic alone. i had panic attacks in my bedroom whenever he came over. i slept on the phone with long distance friends and lovers just to feel safe enough to breathe. eventually, i broke. one night i had a panic attack so severe i knew i couldn’t stay. he was going to keep coming over. i was three months out from trying to end my life, and i knew that if i stayed in that house, i would try again. so i left. i moved across the country. i thought distance might give me back the love i lost, or at least relieve the pressure of remembering but memories don’t care about geography. they pack light. they follow. they color experiences that you would never want associated with them.

i came back eventually, and this time i told the truth. the whole truth. i wept in my mother’s arms. for a moment, i thought she understood. later, she told me what i went through was “nothing” compared to her own experiences. trauma became a competition i never agreed to compete in. then 2024 arrived, and we found out he was “involved” with a 16 year old girl. my mother screamed at me for telling her. she told me i needed to report it. i don’t have the language to explain what that moment did to me — how it cracked open something i’d been holding together with shaking hands.

no one understands how much i loved him. and no one understands how much it broke me to realize i couldn’t anymore. i hate how much i miss loving him. i hate how much i miss not remembering. i hate that remembering made me the burden in everyone else’s story. sometimes i think about the child i was — the little girl who ran into his arms, who adored him with her whole soft, trusting heart — and i feel this violent, protective anger for her.

i would burn whole worlds to keep her safe now. and the worst part? there was a moment, a single moment, when i realized the love was gone entirely: when i realized that my life — and so many others — would be better if he were dead. that realization shattered me. not because it was extreme, but because it was honest. i carry all of it every day. the love, the betrayal, the remembering, the wish for forgetting. my brain protected me for a very long time, and some days i wish it still did. i know i would feel more loved if it did but this is the shape of what it means to remember. this is the cost of surviving someone you once adored. this is the grief of losing a person and losing the child who loved them — at the exact same time.