Sometimes I worry that my writing is selfish.

That it is too much about me. Too much pain. Too much honesty. Too much looking backwards. Too many sentences beginning with “I”.

But trauma can make you feel like every sentence beginning with “I” is too much.

As though your own story is taking up space it has not earned. As though naming what happened is selfish. As though saying “this hurt me” is somehow an accusation too loud for the room.

I also carry doubt.

Not because I do not know what happened. I know what happened. I know what my trauma was. I know the rooms, the words, the fear, the things that changed me.

But I have always found ways to minimise it. To tell myself it was not as bad as what other people have been through. To feel almost guilty for acknowledging my own suffering when there are people in the world enduring pain in such barbaric ways every day.

As though pain only counts if nobody else has had worse.

As though suffering has to be measured against someone else’s before it is allowed to be real.

As though compassion is a limited thing, and giving some to myself would somehow take it from another person.

So I shrink it. I soften it. I tell myself it was not that bad.

But it was bad enough to shape me.

It was bad enough to silence me.

It was bad enough to follow me into adulthood, motherhood, relationships, sleep, fear, choice, consent, and the way I see myself.

And maybe that is enough.

Maybe pain does not need to be the worst pain in the world to deserve language.

Maybe suffering does not need to be compared before it is allowed to be acknowledged.

For so long, I learned to make myself smaller. I learned to measure the mood of other people before I measured my own. I learned to swallow discomfort, silence my no, and question whether my feelings were reasonable before I ever allowed myself to feel them.

And perhaps the guilt spills further than the writing itself.

Perhaps it spills into everything. Into the way I apologise before I speak. Into the way I explain myself before anyone has even asked. Into the way I feel guilty for having a blog that is meant to be my own personal space.

Even here, in a space I created, a space I pay for, a space that belongs to me, I still feel subject to scrutiny. I still feel as though I need permission. I still feel as though I am being watched, measured, judged, or asked to justify why I am allowed to exist so openly.

And maybe that is the wound speaking.

The part of me that learned existence itself could be too much.

The part of me that still apologises for taking up room, even when the room is mine.

So maybe writing “I” is not selfish.

Maybe it is practice.

Maybe it is learning to stand in a sentence without apologising for being there.

This blog has never been about believing my story matters more than anyone else’s. It is about learning that my story mattered at all.

It is about giving language to things I once carried silently. It is about trying to make sense of patterns, pain, survival, motherhood, addiction, healing, ordinary days, and the small pieces of light that still find me.

And perhaps one day, I will acknowledge my suffering without minimising it, the same way I play the same song on repeat in the car when I am alone, without guilt, without apology, without worrying who else has to hear it.

Maybe someone else will read a line and find themselves in it too.

Maybe they will feel less alone.

Maybe they will realise that their own “I” is not too much either.

Because after years of being taught to disappear, beginning with “I” is not selfish.

Perhaps it is survival.