The Ache That Stayed | On My Way

I used to believe that if I just made it through childhood, everything would even out.

That growing up would smooth the edges.

That maturity would quiet the ache.

That time would fix what I didn’t yet have language for.

It didn’t.

The ache didn’t disappear as I got older, rather I learned how to live with it, and almost how not to live without it.

From late childhood into my teenage years, I became functional without being whole. On the outside, I looked like I was doing okay. I went to school. I showed up. I participated in activities. I was involved. I smiled when I was supposed to. I learned how to save face early, how to perform “fine” in public even when I wasn’t anywhere close to fine in private.

Inside the house, it was different.

Inside, I was volatile. Emotional. Loud. Exhausted. I didn’t know how to regulate what I felt, only that it was too much and nowhere to put it. Outside the house, at school, in public, around people who didn’t know me well, I tamped it down. I became two versions of myself. One who desperately needed help and one who pretended she didn’t.

That division was constant. And maintaining it was exhausting.

By the time I was eleven, my world shifted in a way I couldn’t recover from on my own. My dad died in 2006 and suddenly, the life my parents had built simply couldn’t continue the way it had before. Up until then, I had been homeschooled by my mom, challenging in its own ways, but familiar and contained. After his death, the circumstances obviously changed, and public school became the only option. It wasn’t a decision made lightly or carelessly. It was a necessity born out of grief, loss, and survival. 

I couldn’t make friends.

I didn’t know where I fit.

My identity felt fragile and exposed.

It was like being dropped into a world where everyone else knew the rules, and I didn’t even know the language.

I did “okay” in school on paper, but my grades were rough and my motivation was worse. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to try. I remember being in eighth grade and making the junior varsity swim team, something that should have felt like an accomplishment. We took a team photo, and I showed up late, wearing shorts and a tie-dye T-shirt while everyone else was in jeans and a white shirt. I stood out for all the wrong reasons, and I was mortified.

It was my own fault. I hadn’t been responsible.

But moments like that felt symbolic of my whole life, always slightly off, always out of sync, always missing something everyone else seemed to have naturally.

I was in and out of therapy. I was on medication. I was not without help. Not even close. My parents had already placed me in counseling before my dad passed away, and after his death, my mom made sure my sister and I were surrounded by support, grief counseling, therapy, and every resource she could reasonably provide. She never stopped trying to help me find stability, understanding, and healing.

The truth is, the resources were there. The effort was there. The love was there. What wasn’t there yet was my willingness to receive it. I didn’t trust that help could reach the place where the ache lived, and because of that, I resisted it. Not loudly or intentionally, but quietly, stubbornly, and consistently.

In my own immaturity, what I also didn’t realize was that I was grieving more than one loss at the same time.

I was grieving my father.

And I was grieving a mother I had never known.

The ache of being adopted and the ache of losing my dad weren’t identical, but they lived in the same place. Both carried absence. Both carried questions. Both left me trying to make sense of why the people I needed most weren’t there in the ways I wanted them to be.

That ache became background noise, always present, rarely acknowledged.

I coped instead of healed.

I fantasized. I imagined my birth mother coming back for me, the way a child imagines rescue when reality feels unbearable. In my mind, she arrived like something out of a story: dressed in white, beautiful, certain, ready to take me somewhere better. Somewhere that made sense. Somewhere that finally felt right.

It wasn’t logical.

But it felt necessary.

When fantasy wasn’t enough, I sought control. I pushed back. I was defiant to a fault. I stayed busy. I filled my time. Anything to avoid sitting still long enough to feel what was underneath.

I carried gratitude and resentment at the same time, and I hated myself for it.

I was grateful for my parents, for the life they gave me, the opportunities I had, the extended family who loved me. I knew, logically, that I was blessed. But quietly, resentment lived alongside that gratitude. I didn’t know anyone I was biologically related to. And no matter how many times I was told that biology didn’t matter, my heart didn’t agree.

I watched my friends with their mothers, and something about it felt different to me. I interpreted protection as mistrust. I told myself that if I had my “real” mom, she would understand me more, trust me more, let me be who I wanted to be. I didn’t yet have the maturity to see that any good parent would have done exactly what my mother did.

And layered underneath all of it was guilt, guilt for feeling resentful, guilt for wanting more, guilt for being ungrateful, guilt for feeling broken when I had so much.

The lie never yelled.

It whispered.

You don’t belong.

If your birth mother didn’t want you, why would anyone else?

Your parents only took you because they felt sorry for you.

This isn’t your real life.

Something is missing, and it always will be.

Those thoughts played like a soundtrack behind everything I did.

I even wrestled with Scripture in ways I didn’t know how to articulate at the time. I read verses about hope and purpose and being wonderfully made and thought, Where do I fit in that? If I was created with intention, why did my life feel so fractured? If I was meant for a hopeful future, why did everything feel so uncertain?

I didn’t know how to reconcile what I believed with what I felt.

Looking back now, I can say this plainly:

I wasn’t healing. 

No matter what I told myself.

No matter how much help was offered.

No matter how many resources were placed in front of me.

I didn’t have the words for what I felt, and I didn’t believe anyone could truly fix what felt broken. So I accepted the help on paper while quietly refusing it in practice. I wasn’t ready to let go of the lie because it had become familiar. Predictable. Safer than disappointment.

My mom used to say it was like my “love antenna” was broken, that I didn’t know how to give love or receive it properly. At the time, that hurt to hear. Now, I understand what she meant. You can’t love others well when you don’t know how to love yourself. And I didn’t.

Sometimes, if I’m honest, I still struggle with that.

This chapter of my life doesn’t end with resolution.

It doesn’t end with clarity.

It doesn’t end with healing.

It ends with me surviving.

Functioning.

Coping.

Holding it together just enough to keep going.

I didn’t know it then, but the adults in my life were already trying to intervene. And I was already slipping. The ache hadn’t exploded yet, but it was building.

And what came next would force everything I had buried to the surface.