hey, it’s me again…

hey, it’s me again.

writing from the middle.

I watched a video on TikTok the other day that cracked something open in me.

The creator said CPTSD isn’t an illness.

It’s an injury.

I felt it land in my body before my brain caught up.

Because an illness always made it feel like the problem was me.

Like something was broken.

Like if I just tried harder, healed better, prayed more, journaled more, regulated faster — I’d be normal by now.

But an injury?

An injury means something happened.

Force was applied.

Safety wasn’t there.

My nervous system adapted the only way it knew how.

That changes the weight of accountability in a way I didn’t know I was allowed to change.

For a long time, I carried a quiet belief that if I was still struggling, it must be my fault. That healing was something I should be better at by now. That if parts of me stayed tender, reactive, or guarded, I just hadn’t done enough work yet.

Seeing it as an injury moved that blame back to where it belongs.

Not in a shame spiral inside me.

But in the reality that harm occurred.

Injuries create scar tissue.

They change range of motion.

Some heal cleanly. Some heal crooked. Some never fully disappear.

None of that means the body failed.

So maybe my hypervigilance wasn’t a flaw.

Maybe my overthinking wasn’t weakness.

Maybe my need for control, distance, or emotional buffering wasn’t me being “too much.”

Maybe those were splints.

Braces.

Emergency responses.

And here’s the part that surprised me most.

Saying “it’s not my fault” didn’t make me feel less responsible for my life.

It made me feel more capable of caring for it.

Because the work shifts.

It’s no longer:

“What’s wrong with me?”

It becomes:

“What was hurt, and how do I tend to it gently?”

That’s a very different posture.

Some parts of me may never fully heal.

Some triggers may always exist.

Some reactions might always need extra patience.

And that doesn’t mean I’m failing at healing.

It means I’m living with an injury.

And for the first time, I’m letting that be true without turning it into a moral judgment.

It’s not my fault.

And somehow, that truth feels like the beginning of real care.

If this is you too, you’re not behind — you’re healing something that was hurt.