What’s Wrong With Me?

Last night I was talking with my sister.

It was the anniversary of losing our dad.

Our conversation moved easily between lightheartedness, her needlepoint work and sore elbows, to my perfectly imperfect crochet panels, to our parents, our childhood, what we remember and what we don’t.

And somewhere in that conversation, it came up again.

How much of our youth I don’t remember.

She has distinct memories, time-stamped and clear, that I simply don’t hold.

It’s interesting.

And it’s interesting, too, how differently our lives have unfolded.

She hasn’t carried the same struggles I have.

With our parents.

With relationships.

With what I now understand as complex trauma.

She even told me that by watching me, she learned what not to do.

Especially with our parents.

And in some ways, she still carries that,

a kind of self-protection I didn’t have.

We came from the same place,

and somehow, not at all.

And in the middle of that, I found myself asking, almost offhand,

how did I get so fucked up?

I caught myself almost immediately.

I don’t actually think I’m fucked up.

I am strong and resilient beyond belief.

I am capable.

I can stay calm, logical, and present in complex, high-pressure situations.

I am a high-functioning achiever who has always carried large responsibilities.

And even when I was younger, I was trying my best, inside of situations and coping mechanisms I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to get out of.

But for a long time, I genuinely wondered what was wrong with me.

A little girl, a teenager, a woman who was hurting and working so hard to exist, to belong, to be loved. And somehow, even after all the work I’ve done, those patterns have a way of finding their way back.

She said, very plainly, that I’ve experienced a lot of trauma.

And she’s right.

I don’t use that word lightly.

I know how easily it gets tossed around now, pinned to every hardship.

But so much of what I've experienced is real.

Deep. Destabilizing.

The kind that rewires your brain and dysregulates your nervous system.

The kind that doesn’t end when the event is over, but shows up in your life long after.

In that moment, I felt it.

For the little girl.

For the teenager.

For the woman.

Versions of me who needed safe people to show up consistently and didn’t have that. Or had it only briefly, just long enough to feel it before it disappeared.

I cried for them.

And I cried for the woman who thought she had finally found it.

Someone who promised safety.

A place to be soft, vulnerable, real.

And for a while, it felt like he delivered.

But in the end, he was the worst person for her.

Someone who knew what would hurt her and did it anyway.

Who built a false reality out of lies, omissions, and manipulation.

Who abandoned her completely.

I cried for the woman who has done so much work.

Who has fought to understand herself.

To rewire the patterns.

To heal what was broken.

To become healthy enough to meet the right person.

Who fought so hard for herself,

and still ended up in more pain.

I cried for a lifetime of being mistreated, rejected, used, and abandoned by people who said they loved me.

I don’t live in that space very often.

It doesn’t sit at the surface of my life.

But it’s there.

A quiet, steady whisper that runs deep inside me.

And still,

I believe it won’t always be this way.

Because somehow, through all of it, I didn't stay broken.

I built something.

Self-worth that didn’t exist before.

A kind of radical self-love and acceptance I had to fight for.

The ability to look at myself honestly and do the hard work to change my patterns and coping mechanisms.

I learned how to hold standards.

How to set boundaries.

How to protect myself.

And how to let people go,

even when I loved them.

And last night, my sister sat on the phone with me and let me cry.

She knows how far I’ve come.

And she is so proud of me.

Today, I'm back to me—

feeling better in every way.