MGEL Mini: When I Sit Down to Tell the Truth

I’ve been here before, and I’ll be here again. A live snapshot from inside the process

I have done all this work. 
I have tried so hard.
I have struggled so long and still I’m stuck.

Because every single time I come here to write,
I inevitably flinch like I’m expecting a beating. 

Sometimes I can grit my teeth, put my head down, and keep going anyway.  
Sometimes I limp along, present but hollowed out. 
Sometimes I seize up completely and can’t continue at all. 

Not because of what happened to me -
but because I still feel that telling my truth will hurt people I care about.  

This is what I’m trying to drill into my head:

I am allowed to exist. 
I am allowed to have feelings. 
I am allowed to express those feelings. 
I am allowed to grieve.
I am allowed to heal.

It’s okay to feel broken if there were good times. 
It’s not a flaw, it’s not a defect. 
It doesn’t make me ungrateful for everything I’ve been given, or for what I’ve learned from my past.

And yet - 
There it is again. 
That old Snowflake Feeling.
The voice that hisses: How entitled do you think you are, to be broken over nothing?
That calls me spoiled, self-indulgent.
That tells me I’m whining.

But the truth is, I have words now. 
And now that I have language for how I feel and behave,
everything makes so much sense. 
And now that it’s making sense to me, I feel compelled to share it -
because maybe someone, just one person, will finally have the words I never did.

-A

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If this resonated, you might also like:

What if You’re Not Broken?: Challenges the idea that pain = personal failure.
Is It Still Trauma if They Meant Well?: Questions good intentions versus real impact.
MGEL Mini: This is Not a Blog. It is a Rescue Mission: On what I hope to learn with this blog.