A Note on the Core Wound

We keep doing this thing where we blame the person we love for the thing we were already carrying when we found them.

The wound is not theirs. It was never theirs. They just got close enough that it finally had somewhere to go.

Lyon puts the whole architecture of it down like this: we came in as love. Pure. The whole thing. And we landed in a world that couldn’t hold it. Parents who were running their own version of the same wound. A civilization that demanded we be useful rather than whole. So we covered the original thing over. Built a functional self on top of it. And then we went looking for someone who would finally see through the covering and love what’s underneath.

That’s what we’re actually looking for. Every time.

And when someone gets close enough, real enough, the wound comes up to the surface. And we look at the person who got that close and we think: you’re doing this to me.

They’re not. They just loved us enough to press on it.

The fights that feel too big for what triggered them. The devastation when someone we love pulls back even slightly. The rage that comes from being criticized in the exact way we were criticized at eight years old. All of that is the original wound, finally visible, because we finally trusted someone enough to let them stand next to it.

Lyon calls this the fast path. Knowing that the wound is yours. Thanking the person for getting close enough to surface it. Calling the love at the core forward instead of taking off layer after layer in the hope that eventually there won’t be more.

At the center of the wound is the thing that was never wounded. The original love. Still there. Never touched by any of it.

We came in as that. We got covered over. The relationship is the process of the covering burning off.

All of it. The fighting. The betrayals. The moments of contact so real it terrifies us. All of it is the fire doing its work.

Get betrayed early. Get betrayed completely. Let it do what it came to do.

Then show up for the person who loved you enough to reveal it.