Surviving life is one thing. Surviving trauma is another. It feels like walking through a battlefield every day, dodging insults, cruelty, and the next emotional landmine. Every morning started the same: What am I going to screw up today? And almost like a prophecy, something always went wrong.
Walking into the kitchen, I was never greeted with a good morning. Instead: Did you make your bed? Did you brush your teeth? Go fix that rat’s nest on your head. A simple “please brush your hair before breakfast” would’ve worked. But that wasn’t the house I grew up in.
Breakfast came with a verbal barrage: Don’t make a mess. Use better manners. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Hurry up. Wash the dishes. My mother didn’t breathe — she barked orders like a drill sergeant. We were children, but that didn’t matter. Speaking up meant a backhand and the dreaded, “Just wait until your father gets home.”
Five o’clock was terror. We’d scatter and hide, never knowing what mood he’d walk in with. After my mother finished complaining about “his” brats, his mood always turned dark. Dangerous.
It was traumatic in the worst way. But I’m still here. Still standing.
That early conditioning built a version of me I barely recognize now. I was taught that being called ugly, stupid, useless was normal. I believed it. I wore those names like a uniform. Now I hear those thoughts and think, I need to rewire this. I need to survive differently.
I became unnaturally good at certain things. Hiding my feelings. Acting tough. Pretending I was confident while my inner voice whispered that I was stupid, undeserving, doomed to fail. Fighting that voice every day is exhausting. My mind ends each night fried from battles no one sees.
Until January, I was barely coping — faking my way through everything. Then I cracked. Literally. And earned myself a 20‑day stay in the geriatric psych ward. Absurd, really. I’m not old, and I’m not crazy. I was just broken in ways no one had ever bothered to understand.
I’m not psychotic. I’m cracked — yes — but those cracks are the shell of a life I’m trying to shed. Armor that got too heavy to carry.
This is my new chapter. The version of me I want to grow into: driven, healing, learning to feel good about myself without dissecting every moment for danger. It feels like too much to ask for, but I’m trying. I’m alone, still scared of my own shadow, still terrified to trust — but what do I have to lose?
I’ve survived worse.
Here unlearning everything I was taught,
K.
I'm Still Here. Somehow... 