I wish I could’ve looked into the future, two years ago, and saw everything that would come to be. I wish I would’ve known that while I was generating the horrific film strips in my mind, my physical reality was already its own kind of hell. My imagination kept me in limbo between what could never be, with hopeful fantasies, and a what could only come to be, if I did not survive what already was. 

I wish I would have known that I would survive it all. 

You are not stronger because you don’t need medication. But you are able to live a bigger, more beautiful life, if you accept that you might.

The people in your life, who are benefitting from your depletion, will be jolted. They will have to decide how to respond. Sometimes, the things that you feared most, will happen. Sometimes, you will realize that you have been using your inability to rest, your constant doing, your never ending work, as leverage. You have been literally sacrificing your energy, your joy, literally sacrificing your life, for the sake of someone else’s comfort.

“I have learned that an apology without change, is simply, manipulation.”

There are so many things that I wanted that were not what I needed. The things that we want are often the things that feel and taste and look so damn good, but they have no nutritional or substantive value. I wanted the marriage that lasted until death dealt a pause. I wanted my children to have one happy home.

I needed something different.

“I cover my face with my hands to try to convince the tears not to come, but they do. And for the first time in a long time I feel…like I have permission to be me.”

What does healing really look like? What is the end result, and will we ever, get to ‘happy’?