TOSSED OUT
ALM No.95, November 2026
ESSAYS
Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I don’t see myself. It isn’t that I don’t recognize my face. It’s more that I see right through me.
When I look at photographs of myself as a little girl, I don’t recognize her at all. I don’t know her. Period.
I recently became divorced, and a month and a half ago, I was down in the basement separating what was mine and what was his. During this, I came across about half a dozen pictures of myself, ranging from around five months old to ten years old. I looked at them and felt this strange distance from the little girl staring back at me. Who are you? Why do I have such difficulty looking at you?
I paused for a few seconds and thought, I really want to burn these. What good was there in keeping them when all I felt was this empty ache inside me whenever I looked at her? But there was nowhere for me to do that, so I tossed them in a garbage bag.
I just tossed her out, like she had been tossed out so many times before.
All of those years contain painful memories. Although the photos may not have represented those painful times, the feelings become real again, and withdrawing from that young girl and the emotions that come with it are not something I have completely learned to sit with yet.
I just see someone when I look at her. I feel her pain, and I cannot hold it with her, so I turn away. There are times I wish I could just sit there and hold her and speak into her life that she is valuable, she is worthy, she is enough, she is strong and capable. I truly am working on that. I am just not quite there yet.
Other times, I will be standing in my bathroom, looking into the silver-framed mirror, and I look right through myself, unable to see the woman I am. It happens more often than not.
I see my face. I see that I have blue eyes, dark brown hair, a small nose and thin lips. There are moments when I can see what appears to be a confident woman staring back at me, but I know the truth. I know what lies beneath it.
That is when I want to turn away, because I cannot even look at myself. A negative thought comes almost immediately: What is wrong with you? I feel a wave of disgust, take a deep breath, and walk out of the bathroom.
Most of the time, there is an emptiness, a sadness. I wonder who I am and how I got here.
I wonder if it’s because, in some ways, I feel I failed that little girl. I kept pushing. I kept moving. I didn’t listen to her. It was easier to keep her protected, and along the way, I lost every connection to her.
I learned very early in life that there was safety in always moving. When the pain of life started to become overwhelming, I found difficult goals to chase. I trained for fitness competitions, and once I accomplished one challenge, I looked for another that would push me to the edge of my mental and physical abilities. It became part of my identity: what could I do next to prove that I was capable, that I could keep pushing and not break?
She had already been broken enough.
Moving meant I did not have to sit still with the pain of the girl I was trying to protect. I kept busy. There was always another accomplishment to work toward, and once I reached it, I raised the bar again.
I kept telling her she still wasn’t good enough. Not yet. We had to keep moving, keep trying. We needed to be better.
Better at what? Everything.
I could cycle thousands of miles, sometimes with tears rolling down my face from the pain, but I could not stop. I would not stop. Movement kept me from breaking emotionally.
Because maybe then someone would see us. Maybe someone would love us. Maybe someone would finally say, You are worthy.
I kept pushing until I pushed her so far away that we lost each other.
But sometimes life has a way of stopping you, literally in your tracks. There comes a point when you have no option but to listen to the small voice inside that says, Enough.
No amount of movement is going to solve the internal ache of the lost little girl. Maybe the real test is not how far I can push myself, but whether I can finally be still enough to sit with her. To see her.
Movement and staying active are still ways I protect myself from having to deal with what is happening inside me and around me. The moment I stop, when there is nothing to accomplish and nowhere I need to be, the voices inside me become louder.
They start the relentless attack: Why are you sitting? What is wrong with you? You are being lazy. You still haven’t amounted to anything.
In those moments, the little girl starts to emerge. As the grief fills my chest, I sit for a brief moment and hold her pain. Then I get up and move again.
I wish I could say that being still means I immediately find that little girl. I don’t. Even in moments of silence, when I intentionally try to connect with her, she can still be very difficult to reach. Sometimes I know she is there without being able to feel close to her. I spent so many years pushing her away that I suppose it makes sense that finding my way back to her is not simple.
When I think of those pictures, or look at myself in the mirror, I wonder how alone she must have felt then, and how alone she must still feel.
As an adult, I grieve sometimes that I didn’t have the ability to be fiercely bold in letting her discover who she was. I didn’t let her take the risks that might have let her become the person she was created to be. I kept her small and safe from fear. We have both paid a hefty price for that.
There is one picture of her I never tossed out, because it isn’t a photograph.
About twenty-five years ago, I was praying with my eyes closed, sitting in church on a Sunday morning, when I had a vision. I believe it was from God.
I was a little girl, about four years old, wearing a little yellow raincoat, a yellow rain hat and yellow rain boots. I was splashing and dancing and laughing in puddles. And God was there, smiling and laughing and clapping with me.
Tears gently fell down my face. I felt joy. I felt, for a moment, that little Treina was being seen, that she was not alone. It brought comfort and a sense of peace in knowing God was watching over me.
It still brings tears to my eyes, and a sense of knowing that I am not alone in this world and neither is little Treina.
A couple of months later, I was at a women’s conference in Buffalo, standing at Joyce Meyer’s product table. I don’t remember the name of the series, but I remember the cover: a little girl in a yellow rain hat, a yellow raincoat and yellow rubber boots, jumping and splashing in a puddle.
I stood there staring at it in disbelief. There she was, in all her loveliness, splashing and laughing.
Most of all, she was safe.
The image was almost identical to what I had seen in the vision. In that moment, I believed God was showing me that I was not alone, and that little Treina was not alone either. He had been there, watching over her, loving her.
It felt like a gift of acceptance.
I knew I had to buy it, if only for the cover. I cannot say the series changed my life or kept me permanently connected to that little girl, but I cherish that moment. For a few seconds, I could see her as safe and joyful.
I don’t think of that vision very often, but it comes back once in a while, when I think of her and how frightened she must be.
People in my life, even myself, may have failed her, abandoned her, neglected her, wounded her in ways that, as an adult, I still do not completely understand. I am working diligently to see her for the beautiful woman she is and all the things she is capable of.
She is strong.
She is a survivor.
She is much more than anyone has ever given her credit for.
I am learning to listen to her voice, to trust her and to move toward her. We are learning to step out from the shadows and to trust one another one baby step at a time.
And one of the greatest comforts is that I know that little girl was not alone in those puddles.
Treina M. Saint is a Canadian-born writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her personal essays explore belonging, being seen, and learning to live with the inner critic. She has completed a memoir, The Girl I Couldn't See, and her essays have appeared in Peony Magazine and on Tiny Buddha.
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