Shadow Boxing

Internal Battle with Child Self

I came for him like a storm—

words weaponized,

tone laced with venom,

fury spilling from a place

he hadn’t even touched.

I wanted to cut.

To wound.

To make him feel what I couldn’t name.

“You got me messed up,” I barked,

but the truth was,

he didn’t.

He was only standing

where a hundred ghosts had once stood—

and I mistook him for the one who started it all.

I threw accusations like punches,

drenched in pain that didn’t belong to him.

He hadn’t earned my wrath.

He’d only triggered my wounds.

It wasn’t his manhood I was after—

it was the echo of every man

who’d made me feel small,

unprotected,

not enough.

And so, I boxed with him

as if he were history itself.

He stood there—

confused, hurt, quiet—

while I played judge and jury,

sentencing him for crimes he didn’t commit.

I spewed decades of silenced rage,

blaming him for the weight

of years I’d never unpacked.

The childhood ache.

The father wound.

The need to be seen

and the fear that I never would be.

This wasn’t his battle.

It was mine.

And I’d lost myself in it.

Where was this coming from?

How had I mistaken survival for healing?

Silence for strength?

I’d learned to nod, to smile,

to accept without resistance.

I’d learned to obey pain,

to perform around it,

never confront it.

And in that moment,

I saw it all—

the way my trauma wore his name,

and how I had become

the very thing I feared.

He wasn’t perfect.

But he wasn’t cruel.

And he had apologized.

Still, it wasn’t enough—

because no apology could fix

what I hadn’t yet faced.

It wasn’t him.

It was me.

The truth is,

he became the target

of a war I hadn’t declared out loud.

A war with my own reflection.

He stood in the line of fire,

but it was my own past

pulling the trigger.

And when the rage cleared,

when the echoes settled,

I found myself alone in the ring—

gloves up,

fists clenched,

weeping.

Still shadow boxing

with history.