Give me someone else’s chaos and I’m fine. Give me my own and I’m paralyzed.
Many stress‑management professionals are excellent at solving other people’s problems and terrible at applying the same care inward. After writing all this, I’m starting to think I could qualify. I’m the perfect coordinator when tragedy strikes — all business, no hesitation. Honestly, there isn’t a disaster I haven’t already faced.
As a child, I was conditioned to be a pleaser, the one who kept everyone else happy no matter the cost. And trust me, the cost was steep. I survived my parents, my ex‑husband, my boyfriends, and finally my roommate and self‑proclaimed best friend. But when tragedy was aimed directly at me, I crumbled. I went numb. The pain, the fear, the undermining words — all shoved into the farthest corner of my mind. I accepted whatever I was given because I was taught for nineteen years that I didn’t deserve good. I deserved bad, and I had to be still and take it.
If no one else was orchestrating the chaos, I’d handle my own the only way I knew how: pour gasoline on the fire and hope it burned itself out. I’m trying to rewire my brain to understand it doesn’t work that way.
But someone else’s tragedy? I could handle that with one hand tied behind my back. I was trained for it. I was trained to fix everything — chores, homework, messes, disasters — because if I didn’t, I was punished. Being the oldest meant being the scapegoat. My siblings knew it and used it.
It’s a trait that’s hard to shake. It’s automatic. I have to intentionally pause now and decide whether someone deserves my help or is just going to use me. Everyone wears a mask to hide their truth. You have to look in their eyes to know who’s real.
Still standing, still searching for the truth in people’s eyes,
K.
I'm Still Here. Somehow... 