From Rock Bottom to Warrior: The Fight for My Life

In 2018 I was at my wits end. I’d been in an abusive relationship for over ten years and I couldn’t take another second of him putting his damn hands on me. I couldn’t take another lie. Another full blown gaslight. Another lesson on why I was such a bad person for not trying harder to making this terrible relationship work even though I put everything I could into it. Being shamed in “how could I leave my family like this?” I COULD NOT hear it one more time. I tried to leave so many times and somehow he’d convince me to stay even though I knew it would never change. I regularly said I feel like I’m on a roller coaster ride that never ends. Toward the end of the relationship it became so dark that I told our couples therapist that I felt like I was in a dark room with only a single light in the middle, but even it had a cage around it. They both barely blinked.

After much therapy (with a different and amazing therapist) and realization, this deep downwards spiral came within months after he violated me down to my core. I had left him. I had reached out to my community. They responded and helped pull me out. I was happier than I had been in a long time. He came into my new sacred space uninvited, with our child asleep less than 2 feet away, and he took my last bit of soul I had left. It didn’t matter that I said no. That I told him I didn’t want him there. No I didn’t scream. I didn’t want to wake up our child. Besides, I didn’t have anything left to fight with. It’d been over ten years of “your not worthy” message being verified by someone I thought I loved and who I thought loved me. There’s something that hits deeper about that than if it had been a stranger who I could formulate the evilness of. This was someone I chose to bring into my world and he took every hope I had for the world and shattered it into a million pieces.

How do you bounce back from such a dark and broken place? On small piece at a time. Trust me I know that’s not easy. Some days breathing is all I could manage. Today, I’m 1000% a different person because I’ve made my broken pieces beautiful one literal small step at a time.

A day came where I was forced to chose whether I was going to make it or not, and thankfully I finally made the call. The call that exposed it all. The call for someone to come pick me up because if they didn’t that was the last day I’d be on this earth. I remember my skin just crawling at the idea of him grabbing me one last freaking time and I could not do one more damn minute of it. I screamed at the top of my lungs “DO NOT COME CLOSER”. He stepped closer. I screamed “LEAVE ME ALONE”. He came closer. I didn’t want to leave the world, but this one was too freaking hard to continue to be in. He finally stepped back. I sobbed and I made the call.

Today, I own my own house and an income property. I have a stable job. I am reconnected with my family and friends who align. I have joy and happiness in my life. Most of all, I have peace. Genuine down to my core peace. I am a Fing warrior who has some battle scars, but even though I’ve been broken, I am more beautiful than I could ever dreamed possible the day I had to make the call. I am confident. I am weak. I am resilient and damn proud of everything I’ve accomplished. I continue to attend therapy not out of need, but because I believe in Simon Sinek’s “mental fitness” idea. We work out our bodies, why wouldn’t we do the same for our minds? I work to continue to improve. Many days I fall off the wagon, but many days I get up. When I stand back up, I’m further ahead on the trail than I was yesterday and years later, I’m unrecognizable in all of the right ways.

If I can do it, you can too.