In the Thick of Learning Who I Am
There is something that I am feeling to be in the thick of at the moment on my healing journey, and that is learning who I am.
This stage of healing feels heavy. Because for so long trauma has shaped my identity. How I saw myself. How I related to other people and even how I imagined what my future would be. The grip is loosening, and the more it does, the more disoriented I feel.
The Raw In-Between
It’s like there’s this raw in-between where I am not fully defined by the old survival patterns anymore, but I also am not quite sure who the “me” underneath all of that actually is. And truthfully, at this stage in my life it is absolutely terrifying.
I touched on this in a previous post where I spoke about returning to myself, but now I am further down the road, and I see more that I’m gathering all these scattered pieces, some scarred, some new, and slowly putting them together into something that feels real.
Freedom and Fear
Yes, the freedom to do exactly that is there, but with that freedom comes this constant hum of fear. Because what if I put the pieces together and I don’t like who I find? What if I’m not enough? What if I don’t even recognize myself?
That’s the part no one really tells you about healing; the freedom is amazing, but it also strips away the excuses. I can’t just blame the old survival patterns anymore. Now it’s on me to figure out how to live, how to connect, and how to show up. And honestly? Some days that feels heavier than the trauma itself.
Standing in the In-Between
And maybe that’s the real work of this stage, just standing in the in-between, not neatly packaged, no easy answers. Letting myself be terrified and still keep moving. Piecing myself together, bit by bit, even if I have no clue what the final picture will look like.
One thing I have noticed, though, is that I’m not dwelling on things the way I used to. I’m not ruminating until it hijacks my whole day or spins me out for a week. The thoughts still come, but they don’t camp out in my head the way they once did. That feels like progress, even if it’s quiet and even if it’s subtle.
Becoming Someone Worth Knowing
And maybe that’s another part of learning who I am: realizing that healing doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s just noticing the edges softening, the grip loosening, and the weight not crushing me quite as much as before.
Because maybe learning who I am isn’t about arriving at some final version of myself. Maybe it’s about noticing the small shifts, giving myself credit for the quiet progress, and trusting that even in the in-between, I’m becoming someone worth knowing. Someone I’d actually like to be friends with.
And that feels huge, because for so long, I acted in ways that let my trauma and my CPTSD bury me in shame.
Right now, it feels like my mind is full of questions and disjointed thoughts. Some make sense, some don’t. Some circle around the same old fears; others sneak in tiny glimpses of hope. There’s no tidy order, no clear answers, just this jumble of pieces, like a puzzle I’m only starting to understand exists.
And maybe that’s exactly where I’m supposed to be: in the messy middle, learning to sit with the uncertainty, noticing the shifts, and slowly figuring out who I am beneath it all.