I had a moment Wednesday that cracked something open in me — the quiet kind of crack, not the dramatic kind. No lightning bolt, no choir. Just a friend saying something simple that landed like an epiphany.
But we’ll get there.
Wednesday I sat down for an interview that I wasn’t entirely sure how to frame beforehand. It wasn’t just about the exgay/former exgay leader chapter of my story — the one that tends to be the headline, the one people expect. It was about something quieter and in some ways more foundational: my journey with systemic PTSD. (Links to that interview coming soon — stay tuned.)
After the interview, I was talking with my friend Joe. We’ve known each other for a while, like twenty years to the day while. We have been through different seasons along the way, and somewhere in the conversation I said something like, “I know we probably had some fiery exchanges back in the day, and I’m really glad we’ve landed here — as friends.”
He looked at me, genuinely puzzled.
“Fiery? I never thought you were being mean or fiery. You were always kind and polite.”
I sat with that for a moment.
He never thought that I was a religious asshole? Really?
Here’s the thing — Joe isn’t the first person this has happened with. He’s not the first person I had quietly filed under “they probably can’t stand me” who turned around and said some version of actually, I always liked you in spite of our differences. This keeps happening more than not. And every time it does, I learn the same lesson again in a slightly different key.
Trauma is a relentless editor.
It takes your actual history and rewrites it — not all at once, but scene by scene, relationship by relationship — until the version you’re living with barely resembles what really happened. It told me for years that people saw the damage in me, that they felt the harm in what I believed even when I was white-knuckling my way through an interaction trying desperately not to hurt anyone. And I was trying. That part was real. The good in me was genuinely fighting to show up even while carrying beliefs that caused real harm.
But trauma couldn’t let me have that. It said: you don’t deserve to be seen as kind. You should be punished for what you stood for, even the moments you tried to stand for something gentler. I was raised to live with the belief I deserved to be hated; not seen as good. I was projecting onto people I disagreed with my own self-hatred.
So I carried enemies who were never enemies. I carried coldness that was never actually cold. I carried a version of my own story where the best parts of me were invisible — especially to myself.
Joe didn’t see what I expected him to see. He saw someone who was trying.
Maybe it’s time I let myself see that in a deeper way, too.
If you are an abuse trauma survivor, here’s what I want to leave you with: the story trauma tells you about yourself is not the court of record. It’s not the final word. The people around you may have witnessed something in you that your wound convinced you to redefine and hide — your gentleness, your effort, your stubborn refusal to be cruel even when everything in your belief system was giving you permission to be.
That matters. You matter. Give yourself a little grace this week.
If this found you at the right moment, share it with someone who’s been too hard on themselves lately. They probably need it more than they’ll admit.
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