Chapter one: before the rebuild
I never asked for the life I was given. Sometimes I wonder if there was a moment—a single turn I could have made—that would've changed everything. But most of the time it feels like my story was written in pain long before I had the strength to fight back.
The first lesson I ever learned was silence. Not just the quiet of keeping to myself, but the heavy, suffocating silence that comes when no one believes you, when no one protects you. I became good at swallowing words, at hiding tears, at carrying bruises in my heart where no one could see. People looked at me, but they didn't really see me. That invisibility wrapped itself around me like a second skin.
And yet, silence has weight. It presses down on your chest until breathing feels like moving brights through your lungs. Every day I told myself, just make it through. Some days I managed. Some days I crumbled inside while the world kept moving like nothing was wrong.
There were nights when I wished, more than anything, for someone to hold me. Just one pair of arms that would wrap around me and whisper, I see you. I believe you. You're not too much. But those arms never came. And so I learned to wrap my own arms around myself, even when my body shook too hard to feel steady.
But survival doesn't feel like strength. It feels like dragging yourself through mud while everyone else walks on solid ground. It feels like waking up every morning missing pieces of yourself, with no one asking where they went.
One memory still haunts me, though it shouldn't have been anything at all. I was at Walmart, in the cereal aisle. Just a normal day. A couple walked in—a man and a woman, probably about twenty. She was laughing, holding his hand, leaning into him like he was her anchor. And he looked at her like she was the only person in the world. I froze, staring, because the love between them was so obvious, so easy. When they left the aisle, I broke downright there between the boxes of Cheerios and Frosted Flakes. My chest ached like it had split open. Because I realized in that moment—I had never had that. That kind of love that holds you steady. That kind of joy that makes you laugh without fear. I wanted it so badly it hurt, and all I could think was: Why am I like this? Why don't I get that kind of love?
That was me. Before Mike. Before rebuilding. Before I even knew what healing might look like.
This is the story of the girl I was before I became the woman I am now. The girl who was broken in a thousand quiet ways but somehow—some way—kept standing.
