People talk about trauma like it’s a one-act play:
Something happens, the curtain drops, and then we’re supposed to stand up, brush off the popcorn, and walk into the daylight with “lessons learned.”
But the truth is, trauma isn’t a play.
It’s a residency.
It moves in. Pays no rent. Rearranges your furniture without asking. And when it finally gets bored, it leaves one shoe under your bed so you’ll never stop thinking about it.
I’ve had my share.
The childhood abuse that wasn’t cinematic enough for Lifetime, but just specific enough to rewrite my brain’s operating system.
The conversion therapy that tried to scrub queerness out of me like a stain instead of a compass.
The wrongful conviction that stamped my name in a database for a crime I didn’t commit, but still have to explain at every job interview.
The fourteen-year abusive relationship that started as a love story and ended as a crash site.
The cancer.
The years of surviving on couches, in cars, and in the constant hum of uncertainty.
And here’s the thing—surviving all that did give me something.
It gave me depth.
It gave me the kind of emotional intelligence you can’t learn from TED Talks.
It gave me the ability to read a room like I’m scanning for landmines.
It gave me an entire internal thesaurus for dread.
But it also gave me scar tissue.
Too much scar tissue.
The kind that doesn’t stretch.
Therapy helps.
It rewires some circuits.
It teaches me to name feelings instead of swallowing them whole.
It gives me the kind of boundaries I used to think were for other people.
But therapy doesn’t erase.
It doesn’t go back and reparent the child who learned to measure safety in seconds, not years.
It doesn’t clear the muscle memory of bracing for bad news during good moments.
It doesn’t stop the reflex to double-check every “I love you” for fine print.
Trauma leaves little post-it notes in your day:
- Don’t trust the quiet.
- Don’t leave the door unlocked.
- Don’t believe this is going to last.
People call it resilience.
They mean it as a compliment.
And sometimes, yes, I am grateful for it.
I can walk into chaos and keep my pulse steady.
I can listen to someone’s pain without trying to fix it or flee.
I can laugh in the dark because I’ve already memorized the shape of it.
But resilience is a side effect, not a prize.
It’s what happens when you survive things you shouldn’t have had to.
It’s a suit of armor that’s welded to your skin—not because you’re strong, but because it was the only way to stay upright.
There’s also the other side—the way trauma gets into the little things.
The way I can’t just enjoy a good day without scanning for what’s going to break.
The way I keep mental exit plans for relationships, jobs, even dinner parties.
The way love feels like standing on a frozen lake—beautiful, fragile, and always one crack away from swallowing me.
The way I can’t watch people hug their kids without remembering how unsafe my own childhood felt.
The way success feels foreign, like I’m borrowing someone else’s life and they’ll want it back.
I’ve learned to live with it.
Not in the “I’m fine” way—the real way.
The way where you accept that some days you’ll wake up calm and others you’ll wake up with your pulse sprinting for no reason at all.
The way you realize that joy and grief aren’t opposites—they’re roommates.
I’ve learned that healing is not a straight line.
It’s a spiral.
You revisit the same pain, but from a different altitude.
Sometimes higher.
Sometimes lower.
And yes, I’ve learned to find beauty in it.
To take the depth it’s given me and pour it into writing, into love, into the kind of empathy that can sit with someone else’s wreckage without flinching.
But if you ask me if I’d give it back—the abuse, the therapy bills, the decades of mistrust—yes. Every time.
Because there’s enough depth in the world without having to drown to find it.
Final Thought:
Trauma never fully goes away.
It’s not a chapter—it’s a watermark.
You can write new pages over it, build something beautiful on top of it, even let it shine through in places.
But it’s always there.
Not defining you, maybe.
But shaping the way you carry everything else.
And some days, that weight feels like wisdom.
Other days, it just feels heavy.