I didn’t expect something so beautiful to come from it all.
Not from the pain, or the times everything inside me was breaking. Not from the nights I couldn’t sleep, or the moments I forgot how to hope.
But sometimes, life plants something quietly in the cracks left behind.
Out of nowhere, at a time when life had sunk me so low that I saw no way out, I heard a voice I hadn’t heard in over two years, but one I knew like my own.
A voice that’s known me most of my life, and that feels like a sister. One that, especially in that moment, I needed more than I knew.
In an instant, the distance melted away as if no time had passed at all. We laughed and talked.
We were still us. Each weathered inside, changed. For life had taken its toll, but we were still the same underneath.
I suddenly felt a certain kind of strength I’d forgotten existed. And that moment brought light to a part of me I didn’t realize had gone dark.
I hated what brought me here. Still do sometimes. But then I remember, I can’t hate it. Not really. Because it also brought us back.
And that changes the way I see everything.
Maybe the darkest times happen so something wonderful can. Something that makes it worth it.
Maybe pain doesn’t cancel out joy, it just makes us recognize it when it arrives.
Because in life, more often than not, timing is everything.
I’m not healed. Not yet.
But I’m less alone. And now so is she.
And that, I think, is what we both have been needing to survive the darkness.
They said it wasn’t real. That it was all in my head. A child, I felt their judgment. Their assumptions. Like none of it mattered to so many of them.
For years, most of them never acknowledged it. While the truth twisted and bled in my gut. It stole my sleep, drained my childhood, and left me in pain.
Only a kid, I blamed myself. Thought I was weak. Thought I could control it. That somehow, I would find a way. It wasn’t possible. Yet still, I kept trying. Thinking no matter what, I could push through it on my own.
And every time I couldn’t, every time it beat me, I saw myself as a failure for being unable to fix my insides.
They backed away, one by one, until few remained.
The rest stood back, acting superior, smarter, better. Always right. Dismissive of it all, including my mother.
Weren’t they the first to disappear when she became someone none of us recognized? When she wreaked havoc upon our family? On me?
I grew up watching them care more about appearances than truth. More about each other’s opinions than our struggle, our pain. So few ever reached out.
My family and I were the cracked mirror they couldn’t bear to face.
But now, now that my mother has been unraveling for years, now that alcohol stains her every word and eats away at her mind, now that time is running out, now that reality can’t be ignored or rewritten, they return.
With concerned eyes, with soft voices that try to smooth over the past.
They say they want to help. But most seem to be trying to quiet their own guilt more than anything.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t say the reckless things they say, do the things they do, or remain so cold.
They will never apologize for being so wrong. Pride and judgment still gets in the way.
It feels like they look at my family, and at me, like a story they forgot to finish.
But we are not here to be their redemption.
I see it so clearly. And I remember it all.
I’ve always known it is real. I’ve felt it for decades. At times, feeling like a knife is stuck inside me. Causing pain I could and can never fully ignore.
Their silence, Their denial, and their refusal to acknowledge the parts they played, doesn’t mean it never happened.
And now that they can’t ignore it anymore, they say they care.
Well, I see who among them is really here. Who is real, and who still wears their mask.
And I find myself grateful for those who are there. Those who have lifted me up instead of shutting me down, trying to make me feel small.
Which helps me finally start to let go. Of the weight. Of the pretending. Of the rest of them.
You keep showing up. Uninvited. Unrelenting. Dragging my old pain like chains across my chest. You whisper every mistake, every moment I wasn’t enough, as if I haven’t already bled for them.
I have survived you. Over and over. Even when I didn’t want to. Even when I thought I wouldn’t.
You don’t own me anymore. Not my thoughts, not my sleep, not the way I breathe.
I have cracked open, fallen apart, but I am still here. Even numb, even raw, I’m still here.
And if all I can do today is sit until I remember how to feel again, then that is enough.
You are the past. I’m still choosing the present. I’m still choosing to push through. Even when it hurts.
One that zooms in on the moments I’ve fallen and conveniently forgets the years I stood tall, silently holding everything together.
You talk about what I didn’t do these past eight months, but where were you when my body stopped cooperating with me?
When I was in agony?
When everything I’d relied on collapsed underneath me?
Where were you then?
And where have you been all these years?
You want credit for caring now?
Now that my struggle and pain are real to you?
Something you can no longer ignore and dismiss?
You act like my pain made me a problem, like my struggle made me someone you had to fix, analyze, and blame.
But I am not your project.
I am not your failure.
I am a person who broke, because I was breaking for so long before anyone noticed.
I gave so much
For years.
I bit my tongue.
I kept showing up when I was exhausted.
I pushed through days that felt impossible.
I carried pain, physical and emotional, in silence so you could be comfortable.
And the second I needed space to fall apart, you turned your eyes on me like I was the problem.
Why am I always the one being dissected?
Why is it always me under the microscope while your mistakes are brushed aside like dust?
Why do I feel like I’m constantly trying to defend my humanity, like I have to justify being overwhelmed?
I am not a villain because I couldn’t keep pretending I was okay.
I am not to blame for things I didn’t do. And I will no longer carry your inability to understand me as my shame.
I fell apart.
That’s what humans do sometimes. And I won’t apologize for being human anymore.
And beneath the anger… is sorrow. A deep, endless sorrow that feels like it has taken root in my bones.
Do you know what it feels like to wake up and immediately wish you hadn’t?
To lie in bed and ask yourself how you’re supposed to get through another day that feels exactly like the one before it?
Empty, heavy, unrelenting?
There are moments I’ve wanted to die.
Not because I don’t want life, but because this life, in this body, with this pain, with this constant feeling of being misunderstood blamed or discarded… feels like too much.
I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose to be sick.
I didn’t choose to fall apart. I didn’t ask for my brain to short-circuit from pain, or for my spirit to dim from being unseen.
There are nights I’ve lain in the dark, silently begging for something, anything, to take this and me away.
Not because I’m weak.
But because I’ve been so strong for so long, no one seems to see that the strength is running out.
I needed someone to hold me. Not fix me.
Not question me.
Just hold me in the thick of it and say, “I know this is awful, and I’m not going anywhere.”
But instead, I got silence.
Distance.
Assumptions.
Judgment.
And now I feel like I’m screaming into a void where everyone has already made up their mind about me.
But this is my truth. I am grieving. I am hurting. I am not okay, but I’m still here. And maybe that should count for something.
Shannbud 