THE ABYSS LEARNED MY FACE

 

 “If you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

I have loved this quote for years before I understood it.

It was beautiful. Mysterious. Haunting.

It sat in my Notes app, in random captions, in the quiet corners of my mind. Oh, I loved how Nietzsche played with words. I admired the quote without fully grasping it.

Until it became something I had lived through instead of something I had simply admired.

Now I understand it the way you understand a scar, not from reading about it, but from touching it.

Here's what nobody tells you about trauma:

You do not just carry it.

If you're not careful, you start to become the shape of it.

The Fear That Built the Very Thing I Feared

I used to tell myself, almost like a prayer, that I would never become my trauma.

I said it to myself in the mirror. I said it in my journal. I said it every time an old wound tried to resurface.

I refuse to become this.

But fear does something strange when you feed it that much attention.

It does not always shrink under all that watching.

Sometimes, it grows teeth.

The more I feared becoming my trauma, the more I circled it. I studied it. I turned it over and over in my mind, looking for the moment it started, the reason it happened, the version of me it had ruined.

I was so busy staring into that abyss, trying to keep it from swallowing me, that I did not notice it was already climbing into me.

Slowly and quietly.

Through the back door I had left open by staring too long at the front one.

I became guarded in the exact way my trauma had taught me to be guarded. I became suspicious in the exact way it had taught me that suspicion was safety.

It changed how I loved.

I found myself testing people before I let them close, waiting for the moment they would prove me right about the world being unsafe.

My relationship with myself changed too.

I was so busy guarding against my trauma that I forgot to build anything else. And trauma quietly filled the space I left empty.

I flinched at things that were not even threats anymore because somewhere inside me, the abyss had learned my face, and I had learned its walk.

It affected my friendships. It affected how completely honest I could be with people who deserved my honesty.

That's perhaps the cruelest trick of the abyss.

It doesn't always need an invitation.

Sometimes, all it needs is your prolonged attention.

This is not only my story.

I think it's true for so many of us, even outside trauma specifically.

I built a version of myself shaped around resisting.

And a life built entirely around resistance is still a life shaped by the very thing you're resisting.

Once I understood this about myself, I started seeing it everywhere.

Think about a person who stays too long trying to “understand” someone who hurt them, replaying the conversation until they start speaking with the same coldness, carrying the same suspicion as the person who wounded them.

Think about how much time we spend doomscrolling outrage and tragedy online, telling ourselves we're just staying informed, while our outlook quietly darkens without our permission.

Think about a detective who spends years hunting criminals, studying how they think, how they plan, how they justify what they do.

Over time, could some of that darkness begin to influence the person doing the observing?

Not because they wanted it.

Because you cannot stare at something for years and assume you will remain completely untouched by it.

Think about a boy who watched his father hurt his mother. He swore with his full chest that he would never become his father.

But he spent years watching. Absorbing. Studying the abyss.

Without realizing that studying it and resisting it are not the same thing.

Fear kept his eyes fixed on the exact thing he didn't want to become. And softly, almost imperceptibly, he became it.

Think about someone consumed with eradicating corruption, who spends so long inside corrupt systems, learning their language and their tricks, that they eventually become fluent in the very thing they set out to destroy.

The pattern is often the same.

At first, you think you're only observing. You tell yourself you're just trying to understand it, survive it, fix it.

But days become months. Months become years.

And without realizing it, the very thing you were studying begins to shape the way you speak, think, react, and even love.

A person determined to fight hatred may gradually become hateful.

Someone seeking revenge may eventually resemble the very person they want justice against.

A heart that has known disappointment for too long may stop expecting goodness altogether.

And perspective is powerful. Because we do not simply see the world as it is.

We often see it as we have become. What you repeatedly consume shapes your thoughts.

What you repeatedly think shapes your beliefs.

What you repeatedly believe shapes your character.

And your character quietly shapes your life.

Perhaps this is why protecting our minds is just as important as protecting our bodies.

We check our physical wounds.

We rarely check what we've been staring at.

There is wisdom in confronting pain. There is courage in facing reality as well.

But there is also wisdom in knowing when to step away, before the darkness convinces you that it is all there is.

You can look into the abyss without becoming it.

The danger is when looking becomes living there.

I'm still learning this.

Some days, I catch myself staring again, at an old fear, an old wound, an old version of a person who hurt me.

At the abyss.

And I have to consciously look away before it starts looking back.

Trust me, it's not a lesson you learn once.

It's a practice. 

But I'd rather practice looking away than wake up one day as the very thing I swore I'd never become.

Maybe that's what Nietzsche's words mean to me now.

Not that darkness should never be confronted.

Not that we should run from everything that hurts us.

But we should be careful about what we give our prolonged attention to.

Because what we stare at long enough can begin to stare back.

And sometimes, the greatest act of self-preservation is knowing when to look away.

If you've ever caught yourself becoming the thing you feared most, I'd love to hear about it.

You're not alone in it.

And you're not stuck in it either.

— Echoes of Queen