PART 6 — THE ABYSS: WHAT I COULDN’T SEE YET

This is where the name finally makes sense.

The Abyss wasn’t the darkness inside me.

It was the distance between what I could see from inside myself and what other people could see from outside me.

Inside-Out:

I’m hurting.

Outside-In:

She’s yelling.

Inside-Out:

I’m trying to explain.

Outside-In:

She won’t let this go.

Inside-Out:

I’m trying to figure out whether anyone else sees what’s happening.

Outside-In:

She’s bringing everybody into the conflict.

Inside-Out:

I’m terrified you’re going to leave.

Outside-In:

She’s accusing me of something I haven’t done.

Neither side necessarily possessed all of the information.

I wasn’t necessarily wrong about everything that happened to me.

Sometimes I really had been hurt.

Sometimes I really had identified something unhealthy.

Sometimes I really did have a legitimate concern.

But I was missing information about myself.

And other people could be missing information about me too.

That’s the Abyss.

Not:

Who’s right?

But:

What can each perspective see that the other cannot?

For me, healing began shrinking that distance.

I could retain what I knew from the Inside-Out while becoming capable of receiving information from the Outside-In.

And somewhere between those two perspectives, I started seeing myself more completely.

Shared from lived experience, not expert advice.