The Messy Middle

 

Walking Through the Muddy Past
What is the messy middle?
It's that awkward, often uncomfortable spot between ruin and rebirth. The place where we begin examining old patterns, narratives, and beliefs without abandoning ourselves, shaming ourselves, or avoiding the complexity within us.

 

For years, I thought there were simply a lot of things wrong with me that needed fixing. Motherhood, sexuality, marriage, my body, my relationships—even the way I responded to criticism seemed like separate problems. It took time to see the threads underneath them.

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When the Past Shows Up in the Present
Motherhood exposed one of those threads.
I was serious, impatient, controlling, and strangely preoccupied with my daughter being thin and pretty.

When my husband told me my behavior was damaging her self-esteem, I became defensive. Then I started looking backward.

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My father had justified sexually abusing me by talking about my mother's weight. She had become “too fat,” he wasn't getting his needs met, and he didn't want to cheat on her.

 

I was a child. I couldn't understand the manipulation behind those words.

 

What I understood internally was:

"Don't get fat. Don't become unattractive. Don't become someone whose partner doesn't want them."

 

Years later, without realizing it, I was handing pieces of that belief to my daughter.

 

That realization hurt like hell.

 

My childhood explained where the belief came from, but it didn't excuse what I was doing with it. I had to apologize, change my behavior, and model unconditional love and acceptance to course correct.

 

Understanding my old programming meant learning to hold the complexity of truths that had hurt me and truths about how I had hurt others without either absolving or condemning myself.

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When Understanding Isn't an Excuse
The same thing happened in my marriage. I craved male attention and validation. I spent a decade as an exotic dancer. I was hypersexual. I cheated, lied, manipulated, and hurt someone I loved.

 

Eventually, I had to confront the connection between the woman desperate to feel desired and the little girl who had been sexualized before she understood sexuality. It was equally important understanding that connection didn't absolve me.

 

My choices were still mine. I was responsible for what I had done, and I needed to understand what kept driving me there. Neither “my trauma made me do it” nor “I'm simply a terrible person” told the whole truth.

 

Being hurt doesn't give anyone permission to hurt someone else. Being traumatized doesn't make harmful behavior okay. Wounds, patterns, and experiences can help explain our behavior, but they don't erase our responsibility.

 

Accountability isn't self-destruction. It's being able to say, “That wasn't okay. I hurt someone. I need to own that.” From there, I can make amends when possible, understand what happened, and choose differently next time. 

 

A Childhood That Refuses to Be Simple
Some people couldn't understand why I would still love my parents. Once they learned what had happened, their response was immediate:
 

"They're horrible. Never speak to them again."

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I understood their anger and their desire to protect me. However, their certainty put me in another kind of messy middle. They were seeing my parents through the worst thing they had done to me.

I was seeing them through an entire lifetime. I knew what my father had done was wrong. I knew it had damaged me. I also remembered the people who had loved me, cared for me, made me laugh, and given me memories I didn't want to throw away.

The abuse was real. The love was real. Neither truth erased the other.

Some people wanted a clean answer: good or bad, love or anger, stay or leave. But human relationships don't always divide themselves so neatly. People are complex. Life is more nuanced than what we can see from the outside. 

We don't have to bleed on people who didn't cut us. We can tend to our wounds without making someone else responsible for carrying them. The messy middle isn't the end. It's the space between who we were and who we're becoming.

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It's messy. It's uncomfortable. It's also where we can learn to move forward wiser.