I miss being able to write for leisure. There are always too many reports to write or too many scripts to learn and prepare for, pulling me away from the kind of reading and writing I once did simply because I loved it.
Sometimes, somewhere in between all of that, I miss myself.
I miss making time to do nothing. To have nothing to look forward to. To simply exist and get lost in my thoughts without tomorrow’s schedule or the day after hanging over me.
Life has been hectic. Although I’m deeply grateful, it sometimes makes me wonder whether I’m leaving parts of myself behind in the chaos of it all. And by chaos, I mean my work. I genuinely love what I do. The opportunities that brought me here are things I’ll always be grateful for. Yet, on some days, I find myself missing the girl who was probably nothing in the eyes of the world. The girl no one remembered, whose face no one recognised, whose name no one knew.
Just the other day, something a friend said stayed with me. I was in the middle of my own little crisis, replaying something I had said. It wasn’t something I truly meant, but it was something I had genuinely felt in that moment. I knew those feelings were unfair, and my reaction caught even me off guard. It may have disappointed the people who witnessed it. I felt awful about it, but I had no excuse. It simply happened.
I’ve been in regular therapy for years, and only a few months ago my therapist started spacing our sessions further apart, once a month, sometimes once every two months. That was a good thing. It meant I had made enough progress that I no longer needed weekly sessions. It felt like a personal milestone, a quiet badge of honour for all the work I’d put into healing.
But healing doesn’t erase your wounds. Every now and then, they still peek through, showing their scars.
That’s what happened. My friend said, “Well, they should know you’re not a fully okay person.” She didn’t mean it cruelly. What she meant was that the people close to me should know there are things I still struggle with. Hearing her say that also made me realise she’d quietly understood that about me all along. Maybe it even allowed her to extend me a little more grace. But there has never been any enabling, and that’s something I’m careful about too.
I remember something my therapist told me during one of our last sessions. I was caught in a moral tug-of-war, questioning whether what I was doing was right. It felt wrong, yet I was enjoying it. At the same time, the part of me that’s constantly wondering whether I’m a good person kept tormenting me for enjoying it at all. And yet I didn’t stop. Truthfully, much of the situation was out of my hands. All I could really do was sit back and let the universe unfold things as they were meant to.
After listening to me spiral for a while, he simply looked at me and said, “You spend too much time wondering whether you’re a good person.”
That sentence has stayed with me.
Maybe that’s a wound much older than I realise. One that came from spending so much of my life believing I was a bad person, even during the times I wasn’t. Maybe that’s why every mistake feels like evidence, every moral dilemma feels like a verdict, and every imperfect reaction sends me searching for proof that I’ve failed some invisible test of goodness.
Perhaps healing isn’t becoming someone who never questions themselves. Perhaps it’s learning that being a good person isn’t measured by never making mistakes, but by what you choose to do after you’ve made them.
What that whole dilemma reminded me of is that we’re all flawed. As much as I want to be, I’m not perfect either. But the thing is, the people who truly love you will see those flaws and still remember who you are beneath them. It also reminded me that no matter how healed I become, there will probably always be this chaotically woven thread within me that occasionally pulls on the wrong strings. I’m constantly torn.
Maybe that’s what healing really is. Not becoming someone who no longer struggles, but someone who recognises when they’re being pulled toward old patterns.
There was a time when everything I felt was either euphoria or complete devastation. There was no middle ground. Every emotion arrived at full volume, and it was exhausting. It took years of work to find somewhere in between, a place where I’m no longer constantly standing at either edge.
When I first started therapy around five years ago, I had one condition: I didn’t want to know my diagnosis. I was terrified that if I knew what it was, I’d use it to justify my behaviour. I worried I’d begin excusing every unhealthy reaction instead of taking responsibility for it. I didn’t trust myself enough not to become an eternal victim of my childhood, of the environment that left me vulnerable, gullible, and constantly searching for safety. Eventually, I was told that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, and that much of my emotional dysregulation stemmed from it.
Oddly enough, knowing didn’t make me feel broken. It made me feel understood.
It meant there wasn’t something inexplicably wrong with me. There was a reason. There was a name. There was something I could learn about instead of fear. Understanding it helped me understand myself. It gave me language for things I’d spent years trying to explain, and it gave me healthier, more structured ways of regulating emotions that had once completely consumed me.
But even now, it isn’t an excuse. Whatever is wrong with you should never become permission to hurt other people. That’s what accountability is for.
It’s there so we can recognise our patterns, own our mistakes, apologise when we need to, and continue doing the work. And even if some parts of us can never be fully fixed, we owe it to the people around us to make sure we don’t bleed our pain onto those who least deserve it.
She Was Sea 