When Vulnerability Becomes a Target: Writing About Lost Innocence

The Education I Didn't Want

I longed for days of art. Of learning only in the classroom. So many lessons I missed. So much about the world I wish I could have learned from the safety of literature or a classroom.

Instead I saw pain and felt pain and learned pain. It was mine whether I chose to claim it or not.

The Universal Longing

I wanted love. The abstract feeling of belonging, of being wanted and accepted. That longing stayed with me for a long, long time.

If you're writing memoir about childhood trauma, you know this longing. It's the through-line that connects every painful scene, every bad decision, every desperate attempt to feel safe.

The Desperate Search

I wound up holding on to words, memories. Some obviously more accurate than others. Some more meaningful than others. I wound up not wanting any more pain.

What did I have to go through to stop the pain? A lot of bad decisions. I was desperate for a while. Lost in every sense of the word.

I looked for love in all the wrong places. For acceptance in all the wrong places. Sometimes I moved forward on blind rage. With the expectation that the good in me would be enough to stop others from hurting me more.

But when you're weak and lost, that makes you vulnerable. You become an easy target. You become less interesting. Less desirable.

The Turning Point

Thankfully, my anger eventually got the better of me—or was it sadness? I think it was sadness that got the better of me. I didn't want to hurt anymore.

I am especially proud of the days when I felt the disillusion of alcohol. I knew it wasn't working. Or I felt the shift of when it was bringing out more pain than laughter. For a while it worked. It introduced me to another side of myself.

The side of myself that wanted to make light of all that had happened to me.

But there were days and moments when I felt more than anything the depth of the loss in my life. I felt maimed emotionally. My soul was smaller than it should have been. My purity was leaving me too. And my innocence, well I suppose I miss that the most.

What This Teaches Us About Memoir

This raw passage reveals something essential about writing trauma memoir:

Vulnerability on the Page Mirrors Vulnerability in Life

When you write about being an "easy target," you risk becoming one again—to critics, to trolls, to people who don't understand. But that vulnerability is also what makes memoir powerful.

Bad Decisions Deserve Honesty

The "wrong places" you looked for love aren't shameful detours—they're part of the story. Readers need to see the desperation, the logic that made sense at the time, even when it was destructive.

Coping Mechanisms Are Complex

Alcohol. Rage. Desperate relationships. These aren't simple "mistakes"—they're survival strategies that worked until they didn't. Memoir requires showing both sides.

Loss Has Layers

You don't just lose innocence. You lose the person you might have been. The education you deserved. The childhood that should have been yours. Name all the losses.

Pride Lives in Small Victories

"I am especially proud of the days when I felt the disillusion of alcohol." This is the kind of honesty that transforms memoir from confession to art. You're proud of recognizing what wasn't working—that's growth.

Writing the Hardest Parts

If you're writing about the period when you were "an easy target," here's what I've learned:

Show the logic of your choices. Even bad decisions made sense in the moment. Help readers understand why you did what you did.

Don't rush past the shame. The feeling of becoming "less interesting, less desirable"—that's the wound beneath the wound. Let readers sit with it.

Honor what you lost. Innocence. Purity. The version of yourself that might have been. These losses matter.

Celebrate the turning points. Even small ones. Even the moment you realized something wasn't working. That's awareness, and awareness is the beginning of change.

The Courage to Write It

Writing about being vulnerable, desperate, and lost requires a different kind of courage than writing about survival and triumph. It requires admitting you weren't always strong, weren't always making good choices, weren't always the hero of your own story.

But that's where the truth lives. And that's what readers need to see.