mental health

Healing in Two Directions.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ 1 Comment

There is a strange kind of grief that nobody really talks about.

It’s grieving a body that’s still very much alive.

I catch my reflection sometimes and think, “Who is that?” Not in an existential-crisis kind of way—although, admittedly, sometimes it is—but in a very real sense. Somewhere along the way, medications, seizures, blood clots in my lungs, weeks of inactivity, and a nervous system that seems to have a mind of its own introduced me to a body I don’t remember having.

Some days I joke that I’d like to exchange it for the one I had a few years ago.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t come with customer service.

The weight gain has been one of the hardest parts.

Not because I believe smaller bodies are more worthy—I don’t. I truly don’t. But because I miss feeling at home in my own skin. I miss trusting my body. I miss moving without calculating the risk. I miss putting on a pair of jeans without wondering if they’ll fit differently than they did last week.

More than anything, I miss familiarity.

What’s strange is that while my body feels more unfamiliar than ever, my mind is finally beginning to feel like home.

For years, my mind was the battlefield. Anxiety. Addiction. Constant chaos. I spent so much of my life praying for peace that I honestly forgot what peace might even feel like.

Now, little by little, it’s arriving.

My thoughts are quieter.

My heart feels steadier.

I’m finding stability I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience.

Ironically, my body seems to have picked this exact moment to become a complete stranger.

For years, my body was capable while my mind was unraveling.

Now it feels as though they’ve traded places.

It’s a strange kind of healing to feel mentally more like yourself than you have in years while physically feeling less like yourself than ever before.

Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t always simultaneous.

Sometimes one part of you blooms while another is still learning how to survive.

I’ve also discovered something that has been incredibly humbling.

I need people.

As someone who has always been fiercely independent, that’s been difficult to admit.

I’ve always wanted to be the woman who could carry everything herself. Solve every problem. Figure everything out without asking for help.

Now I’m learning to let people drive me places.

To check in on me.

To carry things I physically or emotionally can’t.

Every instinct in me wants to apologize for needing them.

But maybe strength was never about carrying everything alone.

Maybe strength is allowing yourself to be carried when you need it.

That’s a lesson I never wanted to learn.

And one I’m incredibly grateful to be learning.

The biggest transformation, though, hasn’t been physical.

It happened in the quiet.

For years, whenever life became too loud, I knew exactly how to escape it.

Alcohol.

Relationships.

Sex.

Busyness.

Anything that could drown out the noise long enough that I didn’t have to hear what was happening inside my own heart and mind.

Now there is nowhere left to run.

Just me.

The silence.

And every feeling I’ve spent years trying to outrun.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to escape discomfort.

Now I’m learning that healing isn’t the absence of discomfort.

It’s the willingness to stay present in it.

To sit with loneliness instead of numbing it.

To let grief have its say instead of silencing it.

To experience joy without waiting for the other shoe to drop.

To trust that I don’t have to run from every difficult emotion simply because it’s painful.

Some days I don’t know what to do with all of it.

So I just sit.

I cry.

I pray.

I laugh at the absurdity of it all every once in a while because sometimes that’s all you can do.

And somewhere in that silence…

I’m meeting myself.

Not the version fueled by alcohol.

Not the version searching for validation.

Not the version constantly trying to outrun her own life.

Just…

Me.

I’ve remembered parts of myself I forgot existed.

Old interests that had been buried beneath survival.

New passions I never would’ve discovered if life hadn’t forced me to slow down.

I’m learning that my worth was never found in my productivity.

Or my independence.

Or the number on a scale.

Or how much pain I could hide.

It was always there.

I’m still learning how to love this body.

Some mornings it still feels borrowed.

Some days I still grieve for the woman I used to be.

But maybe acceptance isn’t waking up one day magically loving everything you see.

Maybe it’s looking at a body that has survived addiction, trauma, seizures, medication changes, blood clots, heartbreak, and more grace than I can count…

…and deciding to stop treating it like the enemy.

Because this body may not look the way I want it to.

It may not move the way it used to.

It may feel unfamiliar.

I may even be scared of what it will do at times. 

But it has never stopped fighting to keep me alive.

Neither has God.

I’m still learning how to embrace the uncomfortable.

I’m still learning how to ask for help.

I’m still learning how to trust my body again.

Some days I’m grateful.

Some days I’m grieving.

Most days I’m somehow both.

But underneath all of it is this quiet truth:

I am alive.

And for the first time in a very long time, I’m not trying to escape my own life.

I’m staying.

I’m learning.

I’m healing.

And maybe this body doesn’t feel like mine because it’s introducing me to a version of myself I’ve never met before.

One who knows that strength isn’t found in self-sufficiency.

One who has learned that peace sometimes arrives before circumstances change.

One who is discovering that even in a body that feels foreign, there is still so much beauty to be found.

I don’t know exactly who I’m becoming.

But for the first time in a long time…

I’m excited to meet her.

Quiet Aftermath

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

People want breakup stories. Clean cause and effect. Something they can file away as “this is what went wrong.” At least I did. But the truth is usually messier than that. It’s layered. It’s timing. It’s emotional history colliding with a new connection that feels bigger than your nervous symptom can realistically hold. 

Before this relationship, I had already lived through the collapse of an engagement. Two, actually. 

That kind of ending doesn’t just disappear because time passes. It rearranges you. It changes what you expect from love, from stability, from yourself. After that, I got sober. I rebuilt slowly. Quietly. Away from social media and everything I knew. I tried to become someone who didn’t rely on chaos or intensity to feel alive. Someone who could sit with themselves without needing to escape. 

And I did manage to build something stable for a while. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a real effort. It was learning how to exist without numbing everything I felt. 

Then, I fell in love again. 

After 3 years of celibacy, connection hit differently. It wasn’t just attraction or companionship – it felt like a flood into a part of me that had been sealed off for a long time. I didn’t realize how starved I had been for emotional intimacy until I had it again. And once you feel that kind of connection after deprivation, it can become incredibly hard to separate love from survival. 

I started reorganizing my life around that feeling. Not in one dramatic decision, but gradually- emotionally first, then practically. The relationship became a center of gravity without me fully noticing it happening. 

That’s something I understand more clearly in hindsight: it wasn’t one choice that changed everything. It was a slow accumulation of small ones made under emotional intensity. 

And intensity is where things get complicated, especially with Bipolar II Disorder. Because emotional states can come with a kind of certainty that feels absolute in the moment. Not because the compulsions are correct, but because they feel undeniable. Love can feel like fate. Hope can feel like instruction. Fear of loss can feel like urgency. 

Looking back, I can see how much of it was happening inside me: the attachment, the longing, the meaning I was assigning to everything, the way my nervous system latched onto connection after years of holding myself apart. 

When it eventually started to unravel, what hurt wasn’t just the loss of the relationship itself. It was realizing how much of my stability, identity, and emotional regulation had quietly become intertwined with it. 

And then I had to face everything underneath that – the grief from before, the sobriety I had worked for, the parts of myself I had been trying to protect – all still there, still unresolved, now fully exposed again. 

Not because someone took them from me. 

But because I had been carrying them alone all along. 

And I want to be clear about something I’m still learning how to hold without collapsing into shame or resentment. 

I’m not resentful. 

I don’t look back at this with anger toward a person, because that isn’t what this was. What I see now is 2 people trying to love each other without the tools or understanding to recognize what was actually happening underneath the surface. My symptoms would flare – my emotions would spike, my attachment would intensify, my fear would get louder than my logic – and what I needed in those moments was stability, grounding, and understanding. 

But neither of us really knew that at the time. 

So instead of support there was distance. Instead of clarity, there was confusion. Instead of naming what was happening, we both reacted to it. I can see now how easily that can look like pushing away and being pushed away, when in reality it was just 2 nervous systems trying to protect themselves without language for what was going on. 

I don’t believe that means what we had wasn’t real. 

I think it was real – just unsustainable in the way it formed, because it was shaped by intensity, timing and unrecognized mental health dynamics I didn’t yet understand myself. 

And I’m learning to hold that truth without turning it into a story of blame or failure. 

Just honesty. 

Just grief. 

And they understand that sometimes love isn’t enough when neither person knows how to speak the language of what’s happening inside them. 

And I’ve been thinking about how this doesn’t only live inside romantic relationships. 

It shows up in families too. In friendships. In anyone trying to love someone who is struggling with mental illness without having the language for what’s happening. 

Sometimes people don’t leave because they don’t care. 

Sometimes they leave because they don’t understand what they’re seeing. Or they don’t know how to stay close to something that feels unpredictable or overwhelming. And sometimes they disappear not out of cruelty, but out of their own fear, confusion, or emotional limits. 

And on the other side of that, it can be devastating. 

When you’re the one struggling, their distance can feel like abandonment. It can feel like proof that you are too much, too unstable, too hard to love. It can reinforce the deepest fears you already carry about yourself. 

Both things can be true at the same time. 

There can be real pain in being left. 

And there can be confusion and helplessness in the person who leaves. 

I don’t say that to soften what it feels like to be the one who stays behind – because that pain is real and heavy and it lingers in the body long after the moment is over. 

I say it because I’m learning that mental illness doesn’t just affect one person. It moves through relationships. It distorts communication. It creates gaps where language should be. And if you don’t know what you’re looking at, you can mistake symptoms for personality, or intensity for incompatibility, or crisis for rejection. 

I wish I had known that sooner – about myself, and about others. 

I’m still learning how to hold all of it without turning it into blame. Without turning it into shame. Without erasing the love that existed just because the connection couldn’t survive in its original form. 

Some things are real and still don’t last. 

And that truth is painful – but it’s also where understanding finally begins. 

There are 2 relationships that I keep thinking about when I try to make sense of all of this. 

One is my ex-girlfriend, who I loved romantically. One is my brother, who I’ve loved and looked up to my whole life.

And what connects them in my mind isn’t blame – it’s distance that formed during moments neither of us fully knew how to handle. 

I’ve been on the side of intense emotion, spiraling symptoms, and not having the right words to explain what’s happening inside me. And I’ve also been on the other side, watching someone I love disappear into something I didn’t understand, not knowing how to reach them without making it worse. 

Both experiences leave a kind of silence behind them. 

But I don’t see either of them as villains in my story. I don’t even see them as failures. 

I see people doing their best with the tools they had at the time. 

And I can finally say I’m trying to do the same. 

Not to rewrite what happened. Not turn it into something it wasn’t. Not to force it into meaning that erases the pain. 

Just hold it more gently than I did before. 

Because I don’t want the ending of these relationships to be resentment, or confusion, or self-blame. 

I want it to be understanding – even if that understanding arrives late, even if it arrives slowly, even if it takes everything I’ve been through to finally see it clearly. 

And maybe, that’s the only kind of closure that actually lasts. 

Still Becoming…

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

I wake up and I already know. 

Not because I remember everything clearly – but because of the weight. It’s sitting on my chest before I even open my eyes. Heavy, familiar, impossible to ignore. 

My mouth is dry, my head is dull, and there’s this quiet dread creeping in like it’s been waiting for me to wake up so it can fully settle. 

I check my phone. 3:07 p.m. 

What day is it? I’ve completely lost track. I’m sure it’s only Friday… It’s Tuesday. 

Of course it is. 

Half the day is gone and I wasn’t even living it. Just hiding from it. Sleeping doesn’t even feel like rest anymore – it feels like avoidance. Like I knocked myself out just to not be conscious inside my own head. 

I lay there longer than I should. Staring at nothing. Thinking about everything I don’t want to think about. 

What I did. 

How easy it was. 

How fast I folded. 

It replays in flashes, not even full memories – just enough to make my stomach turn. And the worst part? There’s this sick, quiet voice in the back of my head that’s not even surprising. As if to say, yeah…. This is what you do. It was only a matter of time. 

I hate that voice. Because it sounds like me. 

Getting out of bed feels pointless, but staying in it feels worse. So I just sit there, stuck in between, scrolling my phone like I can outrun the feeling. I can’t. It’s in my body now. It’s in the way my chest feels tight, the way my thoughts won’t land anywhere without turning dark. 

I start doing that thing where I bargain with reality. 

Maybe it wasn’t that bad. 

Maybe I can just reset tomorrow. 

Maybe no one has to know. 

Maybe someone DID hack my instagram and phone and messages and phone calls…

But underneath all of it is the truth, loud and steady: 

You knew better. And you did it anyway. Not once at this point, but for days in a row now. 

That’s the part that cuts the deepest. Not the act itself – but the awareness. The fact that I watched myself cross the line a long time ago and said nothing. That the last relapse wasn’t that bad. Like I was split in two – one part screaming, the other part already too far gone to care. 

At this point, as Brad Pitt once described it, this thing had me on my back.  

Basic things feel hard now. 

Showering feels like a chore. Eating feels like something I have to force, if I even can. Texts go unanswered because I don’t even know how to pretend to be normal right now. Everything in my life suddenly feels slightly out of reach, like I’m behind glass watching it instead of actually living it. 

And there’s shame. 

Not the soft kind. Not the “I messed up, I’ll do better” kind. The kind that makes you want to disappear and draw completely into yourself. 

The kind that says if people really saw this version of you – the one who caves, who lies to themselves and everyone around them, who keeps going back to the same thing – they wouldn’t recognize you. Or worse, they would. 

I sit with that for a while. Too long, probably. 

Because the truth is, this isn’t just about one relapse. 

It’s about the pattern. The cycle. The part of me that keeps choosing something that wrecks me and then has to wake up and live in the aftermath like this. 

3 pm. Alone. Heavy. Trying to figure out how to exist in my own skin again. 

And the scariest thought isn’t even “why did I do it?” 

It’s – 

What if I do it again? 

This brings me to today. 

A few days sober, technically. But it doesn’t feel clean or triumphant – it feels like I’m walking through fog and I can’t see where I’m going or what’s on the other side. Like everything is slightly muted, slightly off, like I’m here but not fully in anything.

My brain is slow, my emotions are unpredictable, and there’s this constant low hum underneath it all that I can’t shut off. It’s not loud enough to name, but it’s there. 

This is the part no one celebrates. 

The in-between. The early days where nothing feels fixed, just exposed. 

And I’m writing this because I’m too good at hiding. Too good at smiling just enough, responding just enough for people not to worry, showing up just enough that no one keeps asking me deeper questions. I know how to disappear without actually leaving. I know how to shut people out in a way that’s almost scary. 

And that’s exactly where this thing has always grown – in the quiet, in the isolation, in the spaces where no one can see me clearly. 

I think that’s why I refuse to keep being silent about it. Why I refuse to keep sitting in denial and just waiting for my character to suddenly change. 

Because when people picture someone struggling with this, they often picture something obvious. Something messy and visible and easy to label. (I’ve been there before too). But a lot of the time, it looks like me – functioning just enough, hiding really well, slowly unraveling in private. 

And no one likes to talk about that. 

Or if they do, they soften it. They make it more palatable and easier to swallow. Less uncomfortable. 

I don’t want to do that. Not this time. 

Someone recently asked me if putting such vulnerable things about my life out there is even a good idea. What if it makes people uncomfortable? What if it upsets or embarrasses someone? 

And honestly – yeah. It might. 

But hiding hasn’t done me any favors. Silence hasn’t protected me. If anything, it’s protected the addiction – even when I wasn’t drinking. It’s giving it space to grow without resistance, without exposure, without consequence. 

I’m over that. 

I might be someone who has relapsed more times than I can count. Someone who has fallen on her face, made the same mistakes, sat in the same shame over and over again. 

But there has never been a time I didn’t get back up. 

Not once. 

Bruised, embarrassed, exhausted – yes. But I get up. 

And I’m not sharing this because I’m proud of the mess or because I need anyone to tell me I’m strong. I’m sharing it because I know exactly what happens when I don’t. 

My addiction thrives in secrecy. 

It survives in isolation. 

But it does not survive in vulnerability. 

And I’m done giving it somewhere to hide. 

So I will keep writing. 

Not just when things are messy. Not just when I’ve fallen apart. Not only when everything feels like it’s burning and I need somewhere to put out the smoke. 

But also when it’s quiet. 

When it’s uncertain. 

When nothing dramatic is happening and that’s exactly what makes it hard – the in-between days where I don’t know if I’m healing or just pausing, where I can’t tell if I’m moving forward or just standing still in the thick of the fog, unsure of where I am, and hoping it counts as progress. 

Those are the moments that usually get lost. The ones no one really documents because they don’t feel important enough. They’re either too painful, or not painful enough to be compelling, not joyful enough to celebrate. Just… existing. Floating. Unclear. 

But I think that’s where most of life actually happens… Especially for me right now. 

So I want to write it all. 

I want to write about the mornings where I still feel heavy but I get up anyway. The days where I don’t feel fixed, but  I don’t fall apart either. The quiet decisions no one sees – choosing not to isolate, choosing not to spiral, choosing to stay present even when everything in me wants to disappear and hide. 

Because healing isn’t just the big turning points. It’s not just the relapse or the breakthrough or the dramatic before and after. 

It’s the slow stitching in-between. 

And I don’t want to only remember my life as a series of extremes – broken, then better, then broken again. I want the full thread. The continuity. The small, almost invisible moments where something in me shifted and I didn’t even have language for it yet. 

Maybe that’s what this becomes. 

Not just a record of what I survived – but a testimony built in real time. Not polished. Not edited for comfort. Just honest enough to hold the truth of who I was in each version of it. 

So that one day, when I’m further on the other side of this,  I can look back and see it clearly. 

Not just the falling apart. 

Not just the getting back up. 

But everything in between that quietly made me someone who stayed. 

To Gina and Megan.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

Days go on. 

Life goes on. 

Yet, I don’t know how to live with the questions. 

They don’t come gently – they rip through me. 

What did I miss? 

What didn’t I say? 

Why didn’t I see it? 

Why didn’t I do more? 

I keep thinking there had to be a moment- just one – where I could’ve reached you. Where I could’ve said the right thing in the right way and it would’ve cut through whatever was hurting you enough to make you put the drugs/needle down. To make you stay. I replay our conversations like if I study them hard enough, I’ll find the exact moment you decided “do it just one more time”. 

And God, that thought is unbearable. 

Because I would have done anything. 

Anything. 

I would have sat with you all night.

I would have answered every call. 

I would have fought for you even when you didn’t have the strength to fight for yourself. 

I would have carried your pain if it meant you didn’t have to feel it anymore. 

You didn’t deserve the kind of pain that made using feel like the only option. That numbing out was the only option – even if it cost you your life. And it kills me that I didn’t understand how deep it went. That maybe you were drowning right in front of me and I didn’t see it for what it was. 

I hate that I couldn’t save you. That no one could have saved you. 

I hate that I’m still here living a life that you should be a part of. That I still reach for my phone to text you. That I still think “she’ll love this” before it hits me all over again that you’re gone. 

You’re just gone. 

And it doesn’t make sense. It never will make sense. 

There is this ache in my chest that doesn’t leave – it just changes shape. Some days it’s quiet, and other days it’s so loud I can’t hear anything else. Because I don’t just miss you – I miss who I was when you were here. 

I miss telling you everything I couldn’t tell anyone else. 

I miss reading vocab words to you straight from the dictionary. 

I miss arguing with you about why I can’t make you homemade granola or croutons. 

I hope wherever you are, the pain stops. I hope you’re not hurting anymore. I hope you know how loved you were, even if it didn’t feel like it. 

And I’m so, so sorry that love wasn’t enough to keep you here.

I would have saved you if I knew how. 

I still wish I could. 

But as much as I want it my way, it’s His not mine. 

I have to believe Jeus was there when it happened – that He saw your pain, held you in it, and carried you somewhere peaceful when it got too heavy. I have to believe you’re resting now. 

Safe. 

Whole. 

And I know that someday, we’ll meet again – painting under the trees, next to the flowers.