During my healing journey, I’ve noticed a feeling that doesn’t seem to belong. It’s always there, poking at me while I try to build a real life — a good one. Looking back at what I left behind — the trauma, the abuse, the fear, the people who wanted pieces of my soul — I feel relief. But as I write about the memories and the absurdity I survived, something like sadness creeps in. I’m grieving the life I never got to have.
In therapy, I was told this sadness was grief. That made no sense to me. Why would I grieve being abused and mistreated by practically everyone in my past? My childhood was horrific, my marriage even worse, and the relationship with my roommate — my best friend — was its own brand of chaos. I left behind destruction and blind fear. Why the hell would I grieve that?
I’ve realized I’m not grieving the reality I lived. I’m grieving the idea of what my life should have been.
One of my survival methods was imagination. I built a life in my head — parents who loved me, supported me, taught me to be confident and self‑reliant. A perfect home. A safe childhood. I spent hours daydreaming about that life, filling in details I yearned for but never received. It was how I coped with the instability and danger around me.
I imagined a perfect life during my marriage, through the years of raising children, and again when Alex and I moved into the dream house. I thought that house would finally give me the life I’d been imagining — one where I didn’t have to survive, where I could just be.
But the version of me who lived in those dreams wasn’t equipped for the life I imagined. The real me was scared, timid, unsure, and unaccustomed to anything going my way. I didn’t trust my own existence. I wasn’t capable of living in the dream life I kept creating.
Now I’m settled again — this time in a situation that is safe, and slowly becoming stable. I’ve taken inventory. All the traits that brought doom and despair had to go. I had to reinvent myself. I had to learn how to enjoy good things, accept them, and not melt down when something didn’t go my way. I’m learning how to be calm, how to live with hope instead of chaos.
I’m not there yet. Not even close. It’s easier to fall back into the old container I lived in — easier to be afraid, easier not to trust anything good. Erasing the conditioning I grew up with is brutal work. My first reaction is always the old one. But I’m learning to pause, breathe, and respond like the person I’m trying to become.
My parents conditioned me to survive chaos, not life. Now I have to evict that chaos and teach myself how to live. It’s hard and it might take years, but honestly? The only thing I stand to lose is the pathetic creature I used to be.
Still standing, learning to life in the life I have, not the one I imagined,
K,
