I’ve always seen my trauma as a black hole.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been orbiting around it. Seeing it, feeling it, but never daring to get too close. There was always this fear that if I touched it, I wouldn’t be able to handle what came out of it. So I kept my distance, hoping that one day it would just disappear on its own. Even just a little. Hoping that somehow the universe would be kind enough to take it away from me.
But without realizing it, it kept draining me. Quietly dissolving my energy, little by little, until all I could see was disappointment. Not just in myself, but in everything.
I found myself blaming everything around me because it was still there; unchanged, unmoved, standing strong. And I kept asking myself: why does no one care about this? Why am I the one who has to go through it, to work on it, to carry it? I didn’t ask for this, did I?
And then, one day, I saw something else.
Anger.
The kind of anger that comes from wanting something to disappear so badly, while feeling like no one sees it, no one understands it, no one even notices it. It felt like an itch I was desperate to scratch, but too afraid to touch. And that anger shaped me more than I realized.
It made me believe that maybe there was a reason why people didn’t care enough about my pain, even when I felt like I was silently asking for help all along.
Maybe it was me.
Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Not enough to be seen. Not enough to be helped. Not enough to be worth the effort. And at some point, I stopped seeing the trauma as something separate from me. I started seeing myself as a part of it, like I had merged with it completely, becoming something that couldn’t be repaired, something that was already too far gone.
Now I’m trying to touch it. Not all at once, but just enough to shake myself to the core. It’s not easy, but I’m… kind of proud. Sometimes I tell myself, “oh, it wasn’t that bad.” But it is bad. It hurts. And still, I know I have the power to choose how I respond to it, whether I let it break me, or shape me.
And in that small act of touching it, something shifted.
I realized that I’m not a part of it. The black hole is there because I created it. I built the boundaries around it. I made the container myself, and the trauma simply filled it, with nowhere to escape. I kept it like a collection of trinkets; something to remember, to revisit, to remind myself of what I’ve been through so I would never walk the same path again.
But in doing that, I also turned it into a kind of badge.
Something I wore, as if to show the world: this is what hurt me. This is what I survived. Like an artwork displayed in a museum, so people could see every detail, every layer, every meaning behind it, and the person who created it. I wanted to be seen as someone who survived. Someone strong. Someone worthy of being acknowledged for enduring it all.
But at some point, I realized… it still wasn’t enough.
Because external validation was never the real goal. I just thought it was. What I actually need is to see it differently. Not as something to display, but as something to work on. A project of my own. Messy, imperfect, filled with trial and error, emotional highs and lows, time, patience, and intention. Something that requires a map. Not to escape it, but to understand how to move through it.
And maybe this is where I start to shift my role in all of this. Not as someone orbiting endlessly, not as someone consumed by it, but as someone who can step in and out with awareness. I don’t have to destroy the black hole to move forward. I don’t have to erase what happened to be free from it. I just need to stop letting it define the way I see myself. It can exist, but it doesn’t have to be the center of everything anymore.
I’m still learning. Still mapping, still adjusting, still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. But for the first time, it doesn’t feel like I’m lost inside it. It feels like I’m standing outside, looking at it clearly, deciding how close I want to get and when to step away. And maybe that’s enough for now. Not to have it all resolved, but to know that I’m no longer trapped, just… working my way through it, one step at a time.
Originally written on my personal journal.
