is this healing or just hell?

when i look in the mirror

I stare at myself in the mirror most days and I’m not sure who stares back.

I keep watching this person intently, as they shed more and more layers, shifting into a shell of themselves. Whoever this person is I’m discovering as I peel back the layers of the conditioning, the trauma and dissociation, is equally unfamiliar. It’s all a little unsettling really.

I’m not sure who I was then.

I’m not sure who I am now.

I’m not sure about the person I’m becoming either.

Everything feels raw. Everything is new and scary, (and rarely the exhilarating kind). But I guess anything can feel like too much when it’s never truly been felt before.

[ID: Selfie. Sandra is a Black femme who needs their locs retwisted. They wear a tank top that’s slightly orangey-brown-ish. It’s comfy. And old. The brown frame of the mirror is visible on the right side of the picture. She stands in front of it with her iPhone, kinda old-school like, when the cameras didn’t reverse. Their eyes face downwards as they snap the pic. There’s still so much work to do, but maybe not today... End ID]

Maybe healing feels kinda like that because you know there’s always more unearthing of truth to come and with that comes a whole lot of new feelings. But how can such small dribs and drabs of traumas that reveal these narratives, bringing us closer to our whole truth, create such huge waves of (agonisingly uncomfortable) growth, alongside such minuscule fragments of comfort? I wish we talked more about how shitty healing can feel and how, at times, we’re left wondering if it’s worth it in the end.

When I didn’t have to feel anything, I got by just fine, right?

Maybe I did.

Until I didn’t.

It’s always so hard to remember that it wasn’t fine. I wasn’t fine.

It’s so easy to forget all the lies I clung to that made me believe that if I worked hard enough, I could belong too. At least when I was walking through the world, taking my cues from the people around me, there was always a chance I might get it right. There was always a chance I’d be able to show them that I was different from the rest of them. There’s so much unspoken pain about living like you’re worth is tied to proving you deserve it. What I’m uncovering about how I learned to shift and contort my brain, my beliefs, and my body in hopes of showing everyone (anyone!) that I could be enough to belong, are the newest fuel of my nightmares.

I was never going to belong, here.

I was never going to work hard enough, explain clearly enough, get certified enough, or give of myself enough to a society that never tried to see me, but aimed to debilitate and destroy me instead. These are the stories I’m trying to unlearn and they come with so much pain that I can barely breathe at times.

Who am I if I’m not the one that lived to prove to everyone I was enough?

I can’t even begin to answer that yet.

I keep uncovering so much of what I don't recognise about myself. It feels so foreign, that I question whether it’s even real. Or if these are just more layers still needing to be explored and eventually discarded. People rarely talk about how difficult it is to face what you’ve been forced to hide about yourself in order to survive. Or what it means to feel it all now as you desperately try to put these pieces of yourself together again.

All while hoping that maybe one day you can say you’re healed.

Or maybe, you can say you’re only human.

When you add the discovery of later-in-life neurodivergence diagnoses to this picture, it creates a whole other layer of relearning and unlearning. Especially when things like the true severity of sensory needs, flashing back to past misunderstandings and misinterpretations, and facing the truth of what is disabling, comes to light. New discoveries come back sporadically and at times they can feel as if they overwhelm our whole being. Rarely when we think we’re ready for it and never as we expect it to be.

[ID: Selfie. Sandra is a Black femme who still needs their locs retwisted. They wear a tank top that’s slightly orangey-brown-ish. It’s still comfy. And still old. She still stands in front of the mirror with her iPhone, kinda old-school like, when the cameras didn’t reverse. Their eyes face upwards as they snap the pic. Perhaps there is more to this story worth discovering. End ID]

We were never meant to live as shells of ourselves. Forever dehumanised while dehumanising ourselves, by trying to find contentment in the idea that our worth was something to be earned. That the masks we crafted for our safety, the sensations we buried to keep us from feeling, and the truths we hide for fear of what revealing them would mean, were never who we were or indicative of all we could be. The ways in which we learned to dissociate from our inner knowing and truths were never our character. We were only trying to survive.

But now, it’s up to us to reconnect to ourselves, our inner knowing and start uncovering who we really are.

I still don’t know who it is I’m looking at when I stare into the mirror. But somehow, this person knows more about me and what I need than anyone else who’s ever claimed to have seen me. Even while sitting through the most uncomfortable sensations and discovering the deepest buried truths, I’ve never once had to prove I was enough or fear never belonging, because this person is still here. I might not know who they are just yet, but maybe I’m learning who they’re not.

This journey can be challenging, I know that. But my life will always be better lived on my own terms than on trying to reach a forever-changing point of worthiness and the endless string of broken promises of belonging when I do. I’ve always been worth more than that. We all have.

Sometimes, it’s just hard to recognise it and know that it’s always been true.

Tell me, what are you unlearning about yourself or the world around you now? How has your healing journey changed you or how you see yourself? What did you wish you learned sooner on this journey?