The Map I Never Had

I used to build walls

and call them wisdom.

I kept lists

like they could protect me,

what I wanted,

what I needed,

what I would never survive again.

I thought safety meant distance.

I thought freedom meant never needing anyone too much.

And I stayed single

for four years.

Four years of learning myself

in the quiet,

of getting used to my own name in the silence,

of convincing myself

that maybe I was just meant to be alone.

But something is shifting now.

Not loud.

Not forced.

More like a spark I didn’t ask for

catching where I thought I was already finished.

Because Jesus came into the middle of all of it

not after I got it together,

not after I stopped wanting things,

but right in the middle of my uncertainty

and my guarded heart.

And suddenly,

what I shut down

started to breathe again.

My heart feels full in a way I don’t fully know how to explain

and still, it’s craving love

both in me and around me,

like something inside of me is finally waking up

and refusing to stay small.

The idea of love

doesn’t feel like danger anymore.

It feels like possibility.

For the first time,

I can imagine marriage

without bracing for loss.

I can imagine a family

without assuming it will fall apart.

Not because I’m naïve

but because something in me is being rebuilt.

The map I never had

is still being drawn,

line by line,

in hands that don’t let go.

And maybe this is what healing looks like

not becoming someone who needs nothing,

but becoming someone who can finally receive love

What if healing is not becoming something new,

but finally becoming myself?

I carry that question carefully.

Like something fragile.

Like something alive.

For so long,

my life was measured in survival.

In getting through.

In making it to tomorrow.

In learning how to stay alive

when parts of me no longer wanted to.

And lately, something is changing.

Not all at once.

Not in some dramatic way.

But enough that I cannot ignore it.

I feel it in my body before I can explain it with words.

In my chest.

In my breathing.

In the way my shoulders are no longer braced for impact every second of the day.

I notice it in my mind too.

The thoughts that once circled endlessly around fear do not grip me the same way.

The future does not feel as impossible as it used to.

There are moments that catch me off guard.

Moments when I feel more present.

More awake.

More open than I have been in a very long time.

Not certainty.

Not answers.

Just a shift.

Something loosening inside me that I did not know was holding so tightly.

For most of my life, I lived inside protection.

Anger kept me alive.

Numbness kept me functioning.

Control kept me from falling apart.

And all of it made sense.

It had to.

But something softer has started to show up anyway.

Something I did not invite.

Something I did not plan for.

It feels like hope.

Sometimes like peace.

Sometimes like standing at the edge of something I cannot yet name without stepping back.

And then there is God.

Not as an answer.

Not as a conclusion.

Not as something I reached for.

But something I feel entering my life anyway.

Quietly.

Carefully.

Without forcing anything open.

Not demanding belief.

Not erasing my questions.

Not undoing what was done to me.

Just… present.

And that presence confuses me.

Because I spent so long building a life that did not include Him.

A life made out of distance.

Out of reasoning.

Out of anger that had every right to exist.

I spent years running from anything that reminded me of God.

And now I find myself not running the same way.

Not because I have answers.

Not because I am certain.

But because something in me is beginning to turn toward life instead of only away from pain.

And maybe that is what I am afraid to admit.

That after everything,

after the fear,

after the anger,

after the things I cannot put into words without shaking inside myself,

there is still a part of me that is open.

Not fully.

Not easily.

But enough.

Enough to notice when something feels like light.

Enough to feel something I used to shut down immediately.

Enough to wonder what it would mean if this is not just survival anymore.

Maybe the biggest thing I have ever done

is not believing.

Not understanding.

Not explaining.

Maybe it is this:

that I spent years running from anything that reminded me of God,

and somehow,

without planning it,

I have started to stop.

Not because I am no longer afraid.

But because something in me is finally curious enough

to look back toward what I once turned away from.

They say “higher power” like it is supposed to feel safe.

Like the word should soften something in me

instead of tightening everything inside my chest.

But it doesn’t soften anything.

It makes everything come back louder.

My father used God like instruction.

Like authority. Like permission to do anything and still call it righteous.

He said it was in the Bible.

So it became law in our house.

And I learned law there meant pain you were not allowed to question.

I learned early that scripture could be used like a weapon and still be called love.

I learned obedience meant silence.

I learned silence meant survival.

I learned survival meant disappearing inside myself so no one could see what it was doing to me.

I was made to kneel on a broomstick in the corner. Small room. Smaller me.

Like I was something that needed to be pressed down into place.

Arms held straight out to my sides until they shook so hard I stopped feeling like they belonged to me. Textbooks and phone books placed into my palms until pain became the point and not the warning.

When my arms dropped

the whip came down.

No hesitation. No softness. No confusion about what would happen next.

Just impact.

Just fear learning my body better than I ever got to.

I was sexually abused in that same house where they talked about God like He was watching over us.

Like He was protecting something.

Like He was not also in the room being used as justification.

And I still don’t know how to hear “higher power” without my body going cold first. Without something in me bracing like I’m about to be punished for existing again.

This has followed me into adulthood in ways I don’t always have language for. There have been times it has driven me to the edge of wanting to disappear.

Times I have been suicidal.

Times I made an attempt on my own life and still woke up inside the same mind that remembers everything.

Sometimes in AA rooms I sit there and feel like I’m splitting in half. One part trying to stay present. One part already back there, waiting for the next thing to happen.

My body hears it and thinks of control.

Not comfort.

Not safety.

Not surrender.

Just control disguised as something holy.

Some days I feel anger so strong it makes me want to tear something apart just to prove I still can. Some days I feel grief so heavy it feels like it’s sitting on my ribs. Some days I feel nothing at all and that feels worse than both

because it means I am not even reacting anymore.

And still I stay alive in it.

Still I show up.

Still I sit in rooms where words land on me like they don’t know what they are touching.

If there is something higher, I don’t know its name. And I don’t trust names that have ever been used to hurt me.

But I notice what does not ask for belief in order to exist.

Trees continuing to grow anyway even when nobody is watching. Air filling my lungs without asking permission or offering comfort. My body surviving things it was never meant to carry and still not fully giving up on me.

And something in me that keeps choosing to stay anyway even when nothing about my history makes that choice make sense.

Maybe that is not God.

Maybe it is just survival that never learned how to stop becoming something more.

I don’t know.

But I am still here.

They all have something to teach us. Healing isn’t about rejecting those parts or pretending they don’t exist.

It’s about understanding them, offering them compassion, and bringing them into the light.


Clean.


Like a knife you hold with purpose.

But it didn’t.

It felt casual.

Like sighing when you walked toward me. 
Like my stomach tightening when you spoke. 
Like already being irritated before you even crossed the kitchen toward me.

And the worst part is…

I knew.

I knew about the stroke. 
Knew your mind was still healing itself. 
Knew some things took more effort now. 
Knew you were rebuilding parts of yourself
most people never even take time to notice.

I just did not care.

I built a version of you, out of impatience and assumption. 
Called it intuition. 
Called it annoyance. 
Called it being observant.

But really,
it was cruelty wearing ordinary clothes.

And tonight, 
I watched my own words appear on the screen
like bruises forming.

Ugly things. 
Mean things. 
Sentences so vicious
I couldn’t believe they came from me.

Because now when I look at you, 
I do not see the man I reduced you to.

I see gentleness.

I see a man recovering quietly. 
A man who still moves through the world softly
after the world gave him every reason not to. 
A man whose faith comforts him
instead of making him cruel. 
A man I misunderstood completely.

And somewhere along the way,
between my snapping remarks
and your steady kindness,
I began to genuinely like you.

Not out of pity. 
Not because I had to.

You became beautiful to me.

And that should feel warm,
but instead it makes me sick.

Because now I have to sit with the knowledge
that I met goodness, with ugliness first.

I keep thinking about the message I almost sent you.

How easy it was to list every cruel thought I’d ever had about you.


How naturally they came to me. 
How confidently I once carried them.

Reading them back felt like finding mold beneath wallpaper. 
Something rotten hidden inside a house I thought was clean.

I do not know how many versions of me exist.

The woman who comforts people. 
The woman who leads them. 
The woman who can be patient and warm. 
And the woman who quietly punishes people
for being different than she understands.

I didn’t know she lived in me.

But tonight I met her.

And I think what hurts most is realizing cruelty does not always look violent.

Sometimes it looks like impatience. 
Like dismissal. 
Like deciding someone is unbearable
before they have even spoken.

Sometimes it looks exactly like me.

And maybe there is no lesson in this. 
No beautiful ending. 
No redemption waiting at the bottom of the page.

Maybe the punishment is simply having to live with the fact that someone kind placed trust in my hands while I was busy turning them into something small enough to hate.

Maybe the punishment is knowing you remained gentle anyway.