What I Don’t Know

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In February 2023, when I was drowning in what I didn’t know, and everyone else made recovery sound easy, I wrote:

But here’s what they don’t tell you:

Recovery is not cute.
Mental health is not easy.
And healing isn’t something you can TikTok your way through with a weighted blanket and a smoothie bowl.

When a person spends her life just going through the motions, wondering if it’ll ever end, chances are she’s become her own worst enemy. That was me. Still is, sometimes.

I thought recovery meant showing up to therapy with a list. Admitting the problem. Building a plan. Grabbing a few tools. Boom! Fixed.

But what happens when the damage wasn’t from one event…
What happens when your trauma was raised with you?

When a child is abused in any way, they don’t walk out the other side just fine. Not without a fight. Some of us recover. Some of us don’t.
None of us are born depressed. Or bipolar. Or anxious.
We became those things—after someone chose to hurt us.

So why is it only the hurt one who ends up in therapy?
Why does the broken one get the label, the meds, the shame spiral…
...while the abuser walks away and ruins the next person?

I wasn’t bipolar before the trauma.
I wasn’t anxious before the games, the gaslighting, the chaos.
I begged people not to do more damage—and they did it anyway.

They knew I was already struggling. They knew I had wounds.
They picked me because I was easy to manipulate.

And somehow…
I’m the one rebuilding a life from the ashes they left behind.

Let me tell you what I don’t know:

  • I don’t know how to feel “good enough.”

  • I don’t know how to process pain that doesn’t make sense.

  • I don’t know how to sit next to someone who broke me and pretend they didn’t.

  • I don’t know how to join a social group and not feel like the outsider.

  • I don’t know what “being okay” means anymore.



I do know how to breathe—I don’t need a worksheet for that.
What I need is someone to help me feel like I’m not doing this alone.

Maybe you don’t need rehab.
Maybe you don’t need a shrink or meds or affirmations taped to your mirror.
Maybe you just need someone to say:
“Yeah. I’ve felt that too. Let’s figure it out together.”

If you’re the black sheep, the strong one, the “she’ll be fine” girl who’s quietly falling apart, 
I see you. I am you.

Wanna talk about it?
I do.


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