The Villain in Your Story

There’s a strange kind of clarity that comes when you realize you were cast in a role you never auditioned for.

At first, I believed it.

I overanalyzed everything.
I let anxiety run my life.
I watched what I said, how I said it, what I wore, what I posted, what I had with me, how I carried myself, and how my face looked.

I filtered myself constantly, convinced that if I could just adjust enough, the tension would disappear.

When someone consistently tells you you’re the problem, you start searching for proof.

And if you’re a medical mama, you already know how to do that.

Trauma trains you to look inward first.

When your child is diagnosed with cancer, you replay everything.
The symptoms.
The appointments.
The moments you almost waited.
The questions you didn’t know to ask.
The things that were happening that you knew weren’t your child and weren’t right.

Even when doctors tell you it isn’t your fault, something inside still whispers,
“But what if I missed something?”

So self-examination becomes survival.

You Search yourself.
You Fix it.
You Adjust.
You Carry it.

That wiring doesn’t disappear when the crisis ends. It follows you into other relationships, other conflicts, other accusations.

So when blame showed up, it felt familiar.

I searched myself again.
I prayed.
I asked God to reveal anything in me that needed refining.
I took responsibility, even for things that weren’t fully mine.

I thought maturity meant absorbing it.
I thought being me meant handling it all.

So I tried harder.

And it still wasn’t enough.

No matter how careful I was.
No matter how much I monitored myself.
No matter how small I made myself.

It was never enough.

At some point, the anxiety turned into numbness.
And the numbness turned into a quiet frustration:

Why am I the only one bending?

So I stopped.

Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
I didn’t give a speech.
I didn’t burn anything down.

I just slowly disappeared into the night.

I stopped over-explaining.
I stopped trying to pre-correct misunderstandings.
I stopped carrying blame just to keep the peace.

And here’s what I discovered:

Nothing changed.

The same issues were still there.
The same tension.
The same narrative.

That’s when it finally clicked.

I wasn’t the problem.
I was just the one who was easier to blame.

Because I cared.
Because I reflected.
Because I would actually consider the accusation.
Because I was already trained to look inward first.

But not everything spoken over you is truth.

Joseph was made the villain in more than one story.

His brothers blamed him for their jealousy.
Potiphar’s wife blamed him to protect herself.

He was misrepresented, misunderstood, and falsely accused not because he was the problem, but because he was convenient.

And yet, the brokenness in their hearts didn’t begin with Joseph. And it didn’t end with him.

Genesis 50:20 says,
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”

God was never confused about Joseph’s character.
And He is not confused about mine.

You made me the villain in your story.
Yet Your story didn’t need me to fall apart.