An Original Wound
I’ve been digging for years.
An excavation crew has been running 24/7, always trying to get to the root of it all—to find the why behind how I feel. And I think I’ve touched something.
Maybe not the deepest root, but one of the Original Wounds—one of the foundational pillars the scaffolding of my life was built on.
Growing Up In Two Worlds
I grew up in a split household.
My mother was a strict, practicing evangelical Christian.
My father was a relaxed, disinterested atheist.
This wasn’t a problem—until I started to understand the teachings I was getting three times a week. Teachings that were very clear on “worldly” people: they were not to be trusted.
This was incredibly confusing for me because I was a daddy’s girl. I loved him deeply, and I was heartbroken that he was choosing to be “bad”. I was also ashamed—ashamed of having a split household, ashamed of living with someone who didn’t believe. It felt like a big deal. Because it was.
This might have been an inciting incident—an Original Wound—because it caused me to fracture.
I’ve always been highly sensitive, absorbing everything around me like a sponge. A perfect storm for being deeply impacted by the tension in my home.
(It feels important to say: this is the part of me that still tries to explain away the depth of my pain as just a “me” problem—my personality, my sensitivity. I think I’m doing it to protect myself from the fear that someone might say I was “too weak.” It’s part of my need for the trauma to “qualify.” Part of my Unworthy Survivor arc.)
Two Versions Of Me
I started to compartmentalize.
One side for my dad.
One side for my mom.
A mental split so I could still love both of them.
As time went on and experiences piled up, the fracture grew deeper and deeper—until it felt like I was two different people depending on who I was with. And so neither side ever really knew who I actually was.
The First Crack
Growing up was confusing, exhausting, and messy.
And while this wasn’t one single event, living in two separate truths feels like the first domino—
the first crack in the foundation of who I was allowed to be.
Maybe you have a fracture like that too.
One you’ve been stepping around your whole life without knowing it.
If this hits, you're not alone.
And it’s not too late to name the wound.
-A
If this resonated, you might also like:
Why Me?: A natural follow-up to the sibling question and the mystery of individual suffering.
The Crushing Kind of Loneliness: Reinforces the theme of feeling unseen and unheld.
Is it Still Trauma if They Meant Well?: Questions good intentions versus real impact.
