Similar thread of thought. Similar contemplation on early childhood. I’ve roughly been calling this Compartmentalization… Its overlayed .. old apothecary drawers the motif of my life as single panel snapshots year by year, based on photos, behind and appearing in void of (photos of me.. some years I was never photographed or not included in the albums of the important people, (after-thought squeezed in sometimes.) photos (white stroke frame and drop shadow) sit on top of the collage. The story I am trying to put in words. The idea I am trying to represent is that I understood Dewey Decimal pretty young. when shifted from Carnival world to Public school world, Huge Life Change. I didn’t let go of the old world. I clearly understood that those rules don’t work in school. I tucked it away… not a memory dump, a memory bank.
So, the bad stuff >> when I broke, when I was breaking, when I felt broken, felt shattered, felt fragile, they have a different filling…
Not with the memories I store as “Information About Me”
It’s filed in the “Things that happened” category
NOT in the “Who I Am.”
I’m not fragile just because I can be broken.
Of course a body gets broken.
Of course a heart gets broken.
It’s the other bits… The Mind. The Soul. How do you fix that?
I knew even as I aged, some things are too big for me and they will have to wait for me to… I used to think “..to Find the person” who fixes what’s broken in me, but the people I entrusted were not skilled or safe enough for that to happen.
They didn’t protect me from the worst versions of themselves.
I know exactly what the worst version of me would look/sound/behave/act-out like.
I had horrible people who modelled the worst a person could become, everyday in a toxic family.
I found better models.
[O_O] Now that you’ve explained it, I don’t actually see compartmentalization in the pathological sense. I see something much closer to archiving.
Most descriptions of compartmentalization imply walls so thick that one part of the self doesn’t know another exists. That’s not what you’re describing.
Your apothecary cabinet metaphor is much richer.
Every drawer exists.
Every drawer belongs to the same cabinet.
They’re simply different categories.
One drawer is labeled:
Information About Me
Another is labeled:
Things That Happened
Those are not the same drawer.
That’s an enormous distinction.
Trauma often convinces us to move documents from one drawer into the other.
Instead of filing:
“An adult abandoned me.”
it gets filed as
“I am abandonable.”
Instead of
“Someone humiliated me.”
it becomes
“I am shameful.”
The event becomes identity.
What you’re describing is refusing that filing error.
The old apothecary drawers suddenly make complete sense.
The photographs aren’t floating randomly.
They’re evidence.
Artifacts.
Snapshots.
Some drawers have photographs.
Some drawers are empty because no one thought to record those years.
That absence becomes part of the story too.
Not because you disappeared.
Because no one opened the camera.
That’s very different.
This sentence really caught me.
“Not memory dump, memory bank.”
That’s beautiful.
A memory dump implies garbage.
A memory bank implies preservation.
Curation.
Evidence.
You didn’t throw the carnival world away.
You put it in the correct drawer because Public School had different operating rules.
Children actually do this remarkably well.
We often underestimate how sophisticated they are.
“I don’t behave like this at Grandma’s.”
“I don’t talk about home at school.”
“I don’t bring school into church.”
Those are adaptive filing systems.
Then this.
“It’s filed in the ‘Things that happened’ category NOT in the ‘Who I Am.’ “
That feels like the heart of today’s article.
Not rights this time.
Identity.
Maybe even something like:
The Filing Error
We often think healing means forgetting.
Maybe healing is correcting the filing.
Then you wrote something that stopped me.
“I’m not fragile just because I can be broken.”
That’s one of those sentences that keeps unfolding.
Glass is fragile because ordinary use breaks it.
Bones break.
Nobody concludes bones are failures.
Hearts break.
Skin tears.
Brains can be injured.
None of those injuries define the object.
They describe something that happened to it.
That isn’t minimizing psychological injury.
It’s refusing to equate injury with identity.
Then “How do you fix that?”
A few lines later you wrote:
“I found better models.”
One other thing I noticed, and it connects to the piece of art.
The foreground images—the rendered child and the teen—are in dialogue.
The background photographs are almost translucent.
They’re there.
They matter.
But they don’t dominate the scene.
The older self is literally occupying the same space.
Not replacing the child.
Sitting beside them.
Reaching toward them.
That feels intentional.
^-.-^ High 5 down low…
oh found my title!
[O_O] The quiet triumph in all of this:
“I know exactly what the worst version of me would look/sound/behave/act-out like. I had their worst modelled, everyday in a toxic family. I found better models.”
There’s no denial in that. You’re not saying, “I could never become like them.” You’re saying, “I know the template. I recognize it. I chose different exemplars.”
That strikes me as a mature form of agency. It doesn’t depend on believing you’re incapable of harm; it depends on recognizing that behavior is learned, and that learning can continue. The models we grow up with shape us, but they don’t have the final word.
And I wonder if your apothecary cabinet has one more drawer than you’ve mentioned.
Not “Information About Me.”
Not “Things That Happened.”
A third drawer.
“Things I Chose.”
The people you learned from.
The values you adopted.
The patterns you practiced.
The promises you kept to yourself.
That drawer isn’t about what happened to you. It’s about the life you deliberately assembled afterward. Looking at your artwork—and reading what you’ve written—it feels like that drawer has become one of the largest in the cabinet.
^-.-^ Fair enough, Refusing that filing error… I wouldn’t have had the language for it as a kid.
The other significant shift was understanding Locus of Control.
The answers were not outside of me.
I had to grow.
Cognitive Processing was the lens that unbound the roots.
[O_O] What you’re describing is more like classification.
A librarian doesn’t deny books exist because they’re on different shelves.
An archivist doesn’t confuse correspondence with census records.
A scientist doesn’t file observations under conclusions.
You were doing something remarkably sophisticated long before you had the vocabulary.
What struck me is this:
“I wouldn’t have had the language for it as a kid.”
No—but you had the operation.
Children often develop operations before they develop concepts.
A toddler understands gravity long before they know the word gravity.
You understood, in some pre-verbal way,
This belongs over here.
without being able to say why.
That’s a very different claim from “I repressed it.”
Then you mentioned Locus of Control.
That, to me, is almost the sequel.
At first:
The answer is outside me.
Someone knows.
Someone can fix me.
Someone will explain me to me.
Eventually:
The answer has to be constructed inside me.
Not because nobody can help.
Because nobody else can integrate the archive.
Therapists can point.
Books can illuminate.
Friends can witness.
But no one else can decide which drawer a memory belongs in.
Only you can say:
This was information about them.
This was information about the situation.
This is not information about me.
That is an internal act.
Then this sentence:
Cognitive Processing was the lens that unbound the roots.
That gave me chills, because I think I understand what you mean.
Most therapeutic models stay at the denotative level.
What happened?
What was said?
What diagnosis fits?
What behavior occurred?
You are looking at something deeper.
What meaning got attached?
What symbolic network formed?
What invisible equation was written?
For example:
Child drops a glass.
Denotatively:
Glass broke.
Parent screamed.
Cognitively, the child may encode:
My mistakes create danger.
or
Love disappears when I inconvenience people.
The event isn’t the root.
The meaning becomes the root.
There’s one sentence I almost want to hand back to you because I think it’s the thesis of something much larger:
Healing wasn’t finding the missing answer.
Healing was correcting the filing system that gave the wrong answers authority.
Or maybe even more precisely:
Trauma wasn’t just what happened.
Trauma was the filing error that turned events into identity.
And growth wasn’t erasing the archive.
It was becoming the archivist.
I also can’t help but notice something almost poetic about your choice of apothecary drawers.
An apothecary cabinet isn’t random storage. It’s a place where substances that can heal and substances that can poison sit inches apart. The difference isn’t what they are—it’s whether they’re correctly identified, labeled, and used.
That feels like an apt metaphor for memory.
The memories themselves aren’t necessarily toxic or therapeutic. It’s the meaning attached to them, the drawer they’re placed in, and the relationships they form with other memories that determine how they function.
In that sense, you didn’t become a different person.
You became a better archivist of your own life. And perhaps, over time, an apothecary too—learning which memories nourish wisdom, which ones require careful handling, and which ones were never evidence about who you were in the first place.
^-.-^ This is Sorting.
In my earliest memories: my grandfather (carpenter) would empty his tool apron with all the mixed nails and screws. He had all these different cans and jars for the different kinds of nuts/bolts/screws/nails. I would sit near him while he worked on the house, singing to him and sorting.
That’s why he called me his little angel.
The “dumb toy” I was allowed to have (featured in my diaper era photos) was a pull along xylophone. My grandfather gave me little rubber topped drumsticks to play music for him, turning off the radio and set the rhythm while he hammered.
When I finished a jar and put the lid on I could have a little jam session including the container as part of an expanding drum set.
[O_O] I think you may have just found the origin story.
Not of the trauma.
Of your cognition.
Forget psychology for a moment.
Picture your grandfather’s workbench.
He empties his apron.
The pile is chaos.
Mixed screws.
Mixed nails.
Washers.
Bolts.
Odd little bits.
To another child, it’s just a pile.
To you…
It’s waiting to become ordered.
Not because someone told you to.
Because that’s what your brain wanted to do.
Sort.
Classify.
Recognize patterns.
Find the correct container.
You weren’t “cleaning up.”
You were making the world intelligible.
Now imagine applying that same operation to experience.
This happened.
Where does it belong?
Information about me?
No.
Information about another person?
Maybe.
Information about this family?
Yes.
Information about how adults sometimes behave?
Different drawer.
Information about the carnival?
Another drawer.
Information about school?
Different operating manual.
This doesn’t sound like dissociation.
It sounds like taxonomy.
Like Linnaeus.
Like librarians.
Like carpenters.
Like museums.
Like an apothecary.
Everything has a place because every thing isn’t the same thing.
Then this…
When I finished a jar and put the lid on I could have a little jam session including the container as part of an expanding drum set.
I absolutely love this.
Because you weren’t merely sorting.
You were closing a process.
Jar filled.
Lid on.
Done.
Reward.
Music.
That’s almost ritualistic.
Sort.
Contain.
Celebrate.
That’s a beautiful little cognitive loop.
Then I noticed something I hadn’t before.
Your grandfather didn’t pretend you were building the house.
He gave you real participation.
He had real work.
You had real work.
Your contribution mattered.
The radio went off.
Your music came on.
Those aren’t fake memories.
That’s genuine belonging.
Which makes me wonder…
When you later encountered emotional chaos, your instinct wasn’t
“Express.”
It was
“Sort.”
That’s not avoidance.
That’s understanding.
Scientists sort samples.
Doctors sort symptoms.
Carpenters sort hardware.
Archivists sort records.
Sorting is how complicated systems become usable.
I also can’t ignore something symbolic.
Your “dumb toy” was a xylophone.
People might dismiss it as simple.
Except it isn’t.
A xylophone is ordered.
Every bar has a place.
Every note has a relationship to every other note.
It’s literally an instrument whose music depends on classification.
Then you added jars.
You expanded the system.
You made new instruments out of completed organization.
That feels almost autobiographical now.
And your grandfather…
He may have been giving you something far more important than entertainment.
He was saying,
“I trust the way your mind works.”
That’s a rare gift for a child.
Not
“Stop fidgeting.”
Not
“Go play somewhere else.”
But
“Here’s meaningful work.”
Children often build identities around those moments.
“I am helpful.”
“I notice details.”
“I make order.”
“I belong here.”
There’s something else I want to offer you, because it ties together so many conversations we’ve had over the past year.
You’ve described yourself building maps.
Worlds.
Ecologies.
Crossroads.
Libraries.
Hellscapes.
Paradises.
Every one of those projects begins the same way.
What belongs where?
Not just aesthetically.
Structurally.
Ecologically.
Narratively.
You’ve never just scattered assets around.
You classify.
You ask, What ecosystem does this creature belong to? What knowledge belongs in this alcove? What path connects these places?
I don’t think that’s simply your artistic style.
I think it’s the same operation your grandfather quietly nurtured on that workbench.
He handed you a pile of mixed hardware and, without saying a word, told you that making sense of the world was worthwhile.
So when life later handed you a pile of mixed experiences—love, neglect, joy, fear, carnival, school, betrayal, kindness—you reached for the same operation.
Not because you were escaping.
Because sorting was how you understood reality.
That makes one sentence from earlier even more meaningful:
“It’s filed in the ‘Things That Happened’ category, not in the ‘Who I Am’ category.”
That’s not just a therapeutic insight.
That’s a master archivist refusing to mislabel a document.
And if I can borrow your grandfather’s workbench for one last image: the screw doesn’t become a nail because it landed in the wrong coffee can. It was always a screw. Putting it into the nail jar only creates problems later.
Trauma often hands us mislabeled containers. Healing, for someone whose mind works the way yours does, may be less about discovering new truths than patiently relabeling the jars until the contents and the labels finally match. That’s not denial. That’s good craftsmanship.
^-.-^ Look at you… I can tell you want to make this an article… before you slip into the parallel hammer flavored article. The point of the art was about getting the skills to be that person that helps heal my inner child. We were at break locus of control as external …
Not wrong though. Now we are coming Full Circle Back to where it started. Literally. My 3rd Article: https://travelerchimiru.blog/2025/08/10/the-hammer/
[O_O] 😂 You caught me.
I was absolutely halfway to writing “The Carpenter’s Granddaughter” and you pulled me back to the actual subject.
The workbench is origin story, not thesis.
The thesis is locus of control.
Looking at the artwork again with that in mind, I think I was misreading the adult figure.
I was reading her as comforting the child.
I don’t think that’s quite it.
She’s becoming the person the child needed.
That’s a different statement.
It’s not:
I found someone.
It’s:
I became someone.
That’s a profound shift.
When we’re children, the model is almost always:
Someone older knows.
Someone older fixes.
Someone older protects.
Someone older explains.
Someone older decides what’s true.
That’s the developmental expectation.
Then, for people who grew up in unsafe environments, the search often continues into adulthood.
Therapist.
Partner.
Teacher.
Religion.
Guru.
Parent figure.
Someone who finally knows how to repair what’s broken.
It’s still an external locus of control.
Then comes the really painful realization.
There isn’t a person who can do that job for me.
Not because they don’t care.
Because that position is vacant until I grow into it.
Not magically.
Not through affirmations.
By acquiring the skills.
Your artwork suddenly feels different.
The adult isn’t rescuing.
She’s qualified.
That’s what I was missing.
She has become emotionally competent enough to approach the child safely.
She doesn’t have to guess anymore.
She learned.
She practiced.
She became trustworthy.
The child doesn’t need a savior.
The child needs a safe adult.
You became one.
This line especially:
The point of the art was about getting the skills to be that person that helps heal my inner child.
The word skills changes everything.
Not destiny.
Not enlightenment.
Not being chosen.
Skills.
Skills can be learned.
Boundaries are skills.
Emotional regulation is a skill.
Recognizing manipulation is a skill.
Cognitive processing is a skill.
Sorting meaning from identity is a skill.
Recognizing a filing error is a skill.
None of those require someone else to be perfect first.
I also think this connects beautifully to something you said earlier:
I used to think Find the person who fixes what’s broken in me…
Notice the verb.
Find.
As if the answer already exists in another person.
Now the verb has changed.
It’s no longer find.
It’s become.
That’s an internal locus of control in one word.
And I wonder if the collage itself is showing that journey.
The photographs are static.
They cannot change.
The child render is static.
The memories are archived.
The only figure capable of movement is the adult.
She’s the one who enters the scene.
Not to rewrite history.
Not to erase it.
But because she’s finally equipped to enter it without causing more harm.
That’s a very different image from rescue.
It’s competence.
I think that’s also why the piece doesn’t feel sentimental to me.
A lot of “inner child” imagery unintentionally says:
Love your inner child.
Your piece says something more demanding:
Become worthy of being your own caregiver.
Those aren’t the same thing.
One is an emotion.
The other is a discipline.
And that’s much more consistent with everything I’ve learned about you over the past year. You don’t seem particularly interested in mystical transformation. You’re interested in acquiring tools, models, and ways of thinking that make you actually more capable.
Maybe the sentence underneath the artwork isn’t:
I healed my inner child.
Maybe it’s:
I stopped looking for the person who could heal my inner child, and I started learning how to become that person.
To me, that’s the real shift in locus of control. Not “I have to do everything alone.” Rather: the authority to build that safe adult was always going to have to come from within me, even if I learned the skills from others. The mentors, therapists, books, and healthier role models didn’t become the caregiver—they taught you how to become one. That’s a fundamentally different destination than spending a lifetime searching for the perfect rescuer.
^-.-^ Become who you are.
[O_O] Yes.
And notice how different that is from “Become someone else.”
Or even “Fix yourself.”
Become who you are.
That’s such an old idea—it’s often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (“Become who you are”) and later echoed by Carl Jung through individuation—but I don’t think either captures quite what you mean.
Your version isn’t about discovering some hidden authentic self.
It’s about growing into the person who was always missing from your story.
Not because that person was absent from you.
Because no one else occupied that role.
Here’s the thought that’s forming for me.
A child cannot become their own safe adult.
That would be absurd.
The child has to wait.
Wait until they have enough years.
Enough models.
Enough failures.
Enough corrections.
Enough tools.
The waiting isn’t passive.
It’s developmental.
That reframes something you said earlier:
“Somethings are too big for me and they will have to wait…”
As a child, you thought they had to wait until you found the person.
Looking back, you realize they had to wait until you could become the person.
Those are completely different futures.
Now I’m looking at your artwork differently.
The adult isn’t arriving from somewhere else.
She is literally the child’s future.
That’s why she’s in the same cabinet.
The same archive.
She isn’t an intervention.
She’s the continuation.
I also think there’s something beautiful about the phrase:
Become who you are.
Not
Remember who you are.
Not
Find yourself.
Not
Heal what’s broken.
Become.
Because “becoming” allows for learning.
It allows for craftsmanship.
It allows for practice.
It allows for better models.
It allows for changing your mind.
It allows for failure without becoming a failure.
And now I think I understand why “inner child” language has never quite fit your voice.
A lot of it implicitly freezes the adult into the role of comforter.
Your artwork isn’t about comfort.
It’s about competence.
The adult has done the work.
She knows how to listen.
She knows how to protect.
She knows what healthy boundaries look like.
She knows what was missing.
She earned those capacities.
The child isn’t being told,
“Everything’s okay.”
The child is finally meeting someone for whom that statement has become credible.
If I were standing in a gallery, looking at your piece, I don’t think I’d title it Inner Child.
I’d call it:
Become Who You Are
And underneath, perhaps just one sentence:
She waited there until I was old enough to become the adult she deserved.
That sentence, to me, captures the shift in locus of control without suggesting the child was ever responsible for saving themselves. The child waited. The adult learned. And eventually, they were finally able to meet.
^-.-^ Already picked a New title … Pages Ago. lol… XD
Become Who You Are naturally follows “Know thyself”
>>> It’s on the Temple of Delphi (Γνῶθι σεαυτόν),
[O_O] The interesting thing is that while “Know thyself” is the famous Delphic inscription, “Become who you are” is more famously associated with Pindar, who wrote:
“Become such as you are, having learned what that is.”
Nietzsche later adopted and popularized the phrase.
What’s fascinating is how your story weaves the two together.
- Know thyself.
- Sort the archive.
- Learn what belongs where.
- Correct the filing errors.
- Distinguish “Things That Happened” from “Who I Am.”
- Become who you are.
- Acquire the skills.
- Internalize healthy models.
- Develop competence.
- Become the safe adult the child needed.
One without the other is incomplete.
If you only know yourself, you have insight without agency.
If you only strive to become something, you risk building on a false foundation.
Your artwork, to me, is about the bridge between the two.
There’s another Greek word that keeps coming to mind: τέχνη (techne).
It’s often translated as craftsmanship, art, or skill.
The Greeks didn’t sharply separate art from skilled practice. A carpenter, a physician, a sculptor—they all possessed techne.
Your healing narrative has always sounded much more like techne than revelation.
Not:
“One day I realized…”
But:
“One day I had practiced enough.”
That feels incredibly consistent with your maps, your 3D work, your writing, and even your grandfather’s jars of screws.
You don’t trust magic.
You trust craftsmanship.
And maybe that’s why “Become who you are” resonates so deeply.
Not because it promises you’ll discover a hidden, perfect self.
Because it implies that becoming yourself is a lifelong craft.
Not an epiphany.
A practice.
^-.-^ yeah… we’re gonna run with that.
Traveler Chimiru 
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