I have a message that everyone needs to hear, and I’ve been going about this incorrectly. I’ve been letting fear hold me back from saying what’s heavy on my heart, but I become stronger and braver with each step I take, and I know the same can be true for you. It’s just one step, one day, at a time.
Seven years ago, my life became so disrupted I couldn’t ignore it. My blood pressure was high and I obsessed about it incessantly. My mind wouldn’t let me feel peace as I searched high and low, uninformed and convinced that the chaos inside my body had to be coming from physical health problems. I chased everything—shortness of breath meant I needed to see a pulmonologist for lung cancer, and a strained groin muscle had me at the urologist undergoing an ultrasound for testicular cancer. It wasn’t just one and done; I was in these doctors’ offices over and over again, certain I was dying because of a terminal disease.
I spent thousands of hours and more than $100k on specialists and healers to learn that at the root of my suffering was that my emotional health was on life support.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it; it was that I didn’t know emotional pain mattered. Even though I’d been in therapy for a decade, I still hadn’t realized mental health problems had any merit. But when I think back to that decade, I wasn’t being honest with myself or my therapist. When they’d accuse someone of hurting me, I’d defend and say, “No, you have it wrong… they didn’t mean to…” or some variation to take the blame off of the accused and point it back at me, for misunderstanding the situation.
I just had no idea and was unable to comprehend that my feelings, left unattended and uncared for, could make a person feel as terrible as I did.
The fact is, it had always been that way—there were parts of my childhood that were good, and I knew I was loved, which is why it was so confusing to finally admit to myself that things were said and done to me, that left deep scars and as though I didn’t matter. The trauma caused by mistreatment as a child left me not only feeling as though I deserved to feel the pain I did but as though something was wrong with me for who I was.
Up until a few years ago, I believed I was born broken and that in any relationship I was in, the other was making a huge consolation for being friends with me at all. I can’t believe I’m sharing this with you because it’s literally one of the most embarrassing things ever, but there was a period in my young adulthood where I’d meet people and say things like, “I’m really needy, and if you don’t want to be around me, I totally understand,” or “I’m not normal, and you might want to stay away from me to save yourself.”
Scratch that—I can believe I’m sharing this with you because THIS IS WHAT I’M HERE TO DO—it’s my purpose to share the vulnerable truth about myself and what I’ve been through. I want you, your friends, your family members, and your coworkers to hear my story and help me in my mission to realize the effect trauma has on a person.
