Knowing and Known

I think I have a really activated core wound right now.

The one that screams at me that I’m a horrible person.

Over the last couple of years, my life has shifted in ways that feel like failings to me.

Things have happened that I have trouble forgiving myself for.

And I’m struggling to not let that wound eat me alive.

I know punishing myself doesn’t change the past or make anything different.

But it’s not so much that I’m trying to punish myself —

I just genuinely feel like a bad person.

And that makes it hard to reach for things.

To even have things to reach for.

This wound stops me from being able to connect with people.

I don’t feel good enough. Ever.

And not being able to let people know me… see me…

it stops me from being able to love.

To feel love given to me.

It is the reason for my deep isolation and loneliness.

And it only gets worse as time goes on.

I feel alone in a room filled with my family.

I don’t feel liked — much less loved.

And that is on me.

I can feel my own hands wrap around my body and shake me while screaming,

“How do I fix you?”

How do I heal?

How do I grow beyond this?

How do I tolerate the extreme pain

that comes up for me

in the therapy that heals me?

How do I push past that

so I don’t fuck it all up?

How do I become whole

in a body that doesn’t know

what that feels like?

The pain that comes up for me in therapy

is having to endure the absence of someone

that I slowly give opportunities to

to see me.

And when I’m actually seen,

understood,

not as a monster but as a trying human…

when someone sees me behind everything…

it feels like death

to think about the loss of that relationship.

Because once that happens,

it becomes monumentally important to me.

And then that pain becomes

the only thing I can feel.

Sometimes it eclipses everything else.

I wish I could just be normal.

And I think it also becomes painful for me

to think about losing them

because when someone sees me…

I also see them.

I match the depth they bring into the room.

I see their strengths.

I see what they’re passionate about.

What they fear.

What kind of heart they have.

If they let themselves into the room.

And I grow to love them, who they are

not just their ability

to see and understand me.

Authors Note:

It’s been awhile since I let myself go this deep into my thoughts. It’s been awhile since it has felt this cathartic to type.