For years—decades, no, most of my life, really—I carried something inside me I couldn’t explain. A weight, a darkness, a hollowness that seemed to pull everything inward. It didn’t always scream. Sometimes it just whispered doubt. Other times, it lay dormant, like a silent companion in the corner of every room. I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t name it. I only knew that it distorted things. It made relationships harder than they needed to be. It made me question myself constantly. It stole peace in the middle of calm days. It cast shadows even when the sun was shining.

Recently, something cracked open. A truth emerged, quietly but firmly, like a fog lifting. I realized I was neglected and emotionally abused as a child—not in the ways people expect, not with bruises or trauma that makes headlines. But in quieter, deeper ways. I was not physically hurt. I was not sexually abused. But I was unseen. Unheard. Unheld. I was not nurtured in the way a child needs to grow strong roots.

I was left alone in moments when I needed someone to sit with me and say, “You’re not crazy. You’re not bad. You’re just a kid.” I was silenced when I asked too many questions. I was punished emotionally for feeling too deeply. I was told to toughen up, to stop being dramatic, to quit needing so much. And over time, I internalized it all. I became my own abuser—neglecting my needs, minimizing my pain, carrying shame that never belonged to me in the first place.

This realization didn’t come all at once. It came in waves—through therapy, through conversations, through memories I didn’t know I had. At first, I didn’t want it to be true. I thought I was being ungrateful. I thought I was rewriting history. But truth doesn’t go away when you look away. It waits. And when I finally turned toward it, I saw myself clearly for the first time.

The truth has not made everything better overnight. It hasn’t rewritten the past. But it has done something more important: it has given shape to the black hole. It gave it a name. And when pain has a name, it loses its power to confuse. When trauma is acknowledged, it stops masquerading as personality. I was not born broken. I was wounded. And wounds can heal.

Since naming this, I’ve felt something shift in me. I no longer apologize for needing rest. I no longer try to explain away my sensitivity. I don’t make excuses for setting boundaries. I’m starting to parent myself in the way I was never parented—with gentleness, with patience, with forgiveness. I’m learning how to show up for the child in me who waited far too long for someone to notice he was hurting.

There’s still work to do. Healing is not linear. But the black hole isn’t a mystery anymore. It’s not some flaw in my core. It’s an echo of the way I was left alone when I needed connection most. And now that I understand it, I’m not afraid of it. I can stand in its presence and say, “I see you. I know why you’re here. But you don’t get to steer anymore.”

It wasn’t just that I had pain. It was that I didn’t understand where the pain came from. That made it impossible to learn from it. Instead of seeing patterns, I saw personal failings. Instead of growth, I got stuck in cycles. Every time I tried to look inward, to explore the parts of me that were hurting or afraid or angry, something would block the path. Like clockwork, everything I tried to observe about myself got distorted—sucked into the black hole and returned to me as shame or confusion.

This black hole didn’t just hold grief. It swallowed clarity. It took my efforts to self-reflect and twisted them into self-blame. I couldn’t learn about my own shadows—because they kept getting misrepresented at the send point. I’d begin to explore something, some fear or reaction or pattern, but by the time it reached the surface, it had already been warped. Every attempt at insight felt sabotaged by a deeper, invisible hand. And that’s exactly what neglect and emotional abuse do: they teach you not to trust your perceptions. They leave you doubting what you feel, what you saw, what you need, what you are.

So instead of exploring my shadows, I avoided them. Or worse, I assumed they were monsters, proof that I was flawed, unworthy, or broken beyond repair. But now I see they were just parts of me that had never been allowed to exist in the light. They were not dangerous. They were wounded. And they were trying, in the only ways they knew how, to be seen.

That black hole acted like a filter. It didn’t just block understanding—it replaced it with false narratives. I believed I was too much. I believed I was not enough. I believed I was responsible for the emotional weather of everyone around me. That belief system wasn’t mine. It was installed. It was programmed by years of being overlooked, dismissed, or required to shrink so someone else could feel more comfortable.

Now that I can name what happened to me, I can start to undo what it taught me. I can see my shadows not as signs of danger but as invitations. Invitations to reclaim what was lost. To feel what was once forbidden. To reconnect with parts of myself that had been silenced, minimized, or exiled.

The black hole is still there, in some ways—but it's no longer the center of my gravity. I’m slowly building a new center. One made of awareness. One made of truth. One where even the darkest parts of me can step into the light without fear of being misunderstood.

And the most astonishing thing about all of this is that I only realized it yesterday. One day ago, I didn’t have the words. I didn’t have the frame. I just had the ache. But now, everything is different. Because now I know. And knowing—really knowing—has changed how I see myself.

This is day one of the rest of my healing. And I am not walking into it empty. I am walking in with eyes open, with language that makes sense, and with a commitment to never again treat myself the way others once did.

The black hole has a name. And now, I finally have mine back, too.