I Lived Through What Was Supposed to Kill Me

 CONTENT WARNING / TRIGGER WARNING

This post contains explicit discussion of sexual assualt, childhood neglect and abuse, intimate partner violence, severe mental illness, postpartum health crises, loss of child custody, drug use, self-harm, suicide attempts, graphic descriptions of violence, and suicidal ideation. Please read with care and take breaks as needed. 

I live with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Bipolar 1.

Complex PTSD.

ADHD.

Autism.

Major Depressive Disorder.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

People see that list and think it explains me. As if diagnoses are personality traits. As if a few clinical words can summarize a lifetime of damage, survival, and resilience. They don’t see the years that came before the labels. They don’t see the child who learned too early that emotions were dangerous and silence was safer.

I wasn’t allowed to have feelings growing up. Sadness was punished. Anger was labeled disrespect. Fear was ignored. I learned that expressing pain only made things worse, so I buried it. I learned that if something bad happened to me, it was because of me. That I caused it. That I deserved it. That accountability only ever went one direction.

I was neglected in ways that still echo.

I was mentally abused until my thoughts no longer felt like my own.

I was physically abused until my body learned to brace for impact.

And I was raped.

That word is too small for what it did to me.

When I was 14, my life became something unrecognizable.

There was a gun to my head.

There was a knife in my leg—the scar still there, a permanent reminder that my body remembers even when my mind tries to forget.

There were broken bones that healed incorrectly because no one took me to get help.

I was forced to take drugs I didn’t consent to.

I was confined. Watched. Controlled.

I wasn’t a teenager. I was a prisoner.

What people don’t understand is that trauma like that doesn’t stay in the past. It rewires your nervous system. It teaches your body that danger is constant. It teaches your brain that love and pain are inseparable. It trains you to survive, not to live.

From ages 14 to 21, I was trapped in a relationship that almost killed me more than once. Seven years of nonstop abuse. Physical violence. Cheating used as punishment and control. Gaslighting so constant that I stopped trusting my own memory. Manipulation so deep that I learned to apologize for things I didn’t do.

I was told I was crazy.

I was told I was imagining things.

I was told no one else would ever love me.

After long enough, those words stop sounding like abuse and start sounding like truth. You don’t just hear them—you absorb them. They become the voice in your head long after the person is gone.

From 21 to 22, there was another man. Different name. Same damage. By then, abuse felt inevitable, like a pattern written into my bones. Safety felt unrealistic. Suspicious. Temporary.

And in the middle of all of that, I became a mother.

I had my first son at 14.

I was raising a baby while still being abused. While still being controlled. While still being harmed. I was learning how to keep another human alive while I wasn’t safe myself. While other kids my age were worried about school dances and friendships, I was worried about bottles, diapers, and protecting my child from the world I was trapped in.

At 16, I moved out trying to escape—and walked straight into another abusive situation no one knows about. Survival doesn’t always look like freedom. Sometimes it looks like choosing the least deadly option available.

I had my second son at 18.

My daughter at 22.

My children became my entire identity. They were my purpose. My anchor. The only reason I stayed alive on days when breathing felt optional. Every ounce of love I never received, I poured into them. They were proof that something good could come from a life built on pain.

And then my mind finally collapsed under the weight of everything it had been carrying.

At 23, CAS took all three of my children.

I was dealing with Postpartum Depression.

Postpartum Anxiety.

Postpartum Psychosis.

On top of every other diagnosis I already carried.

I wasn’t medicated because I was breastfeeding. I was exhausted beyond language. I was dissociating through entire days. I was in custody court with my abuser and my son’s abuser, trying to advocate for myself while barely tethered to reality. I had no family. No friends. No support system. I was completely alone.

When my kids were taken, my life didn’t just fall apart—it emptied.

The silence in my home felt violent. Every room echoed with their absence. Time stopped making sense. I didn’t know who I was without them. And that’s when the drug use started—not to party, not to escape reality forever, but to numb the pain long enough to function. Long enough to sleep. Long enough to survive another day without screaming.

The last two years without my children nearly killed me.

There were suicide attempts.

There was self-harm.

There were nights I genuinely didn’t think I would wake up.

I felt like a failure in every way imaginable. As a mother. As a survivor. As a person. I started to believe the worst things people said about me—that I was unstable, broken, unfit, dangerous. When you’ve been fighting your entire life, exhaustion starts to sound like truth. You start to wonder if giving up would finally bring peace.

And then—something complicated happened.

I finally found someone safe.

Someone who doesn’t yell.

Someone who doesn’t threaten.

Someone who doesn’t hurt me.

And that safety terrifies me.

Because my nervous system doesn’t know how to exist without chaos. Because my brain keeps waiting for the harm to come. Because after a lifetime of violence, peace feels unfamiliar and dangerous. I self-sabotage. I panic. I overreact. I convince myself I’m ruining something good before it can be taken from me.

Trauma doesn’t end when danger ends.

Sometimes the hardest part of healing is realizing you’re safe now—but your body hasn’t learned how to believe it yet. Sometimes healing looks like crying in someone’s arms while your nervous system slowly relearns what calm feels like.

There are still days I want to give up. Days where the past feels heavier than the future. Days where the guilt, grief, and shame all scream louder than hope. Days where I’m tired of being strong, tired of surviving, tired of proving I deserve to exist.

But this is the truth I am holding onto with everything I have:

My kids are coming home.

And I cannot quit now.

I didn’t survive guns, knives, broken bones, rape, abuse, addiction, and the loss of my children just to disappear before the ending changes. I didn’t fight this hard to let the worst moments of my life be the only ones that define me.

I am still here—not because I always feel strong, but because I refuse to let what tried to destroy me win.

If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re drowning—if your mind feels like a war zone and your past won’t stop chasing you—I need you to hear this:

You are not weak for breaking under what broke you.

You are not failing because healing is slow.

You are not beyond saving because you are tired.

I didn’t think I would survive.

I didn’t think I deserved to.

But I am still here.

And if I lived through what I was never meant to—

If I am still standing after everything—

Then maybe there is hope for you too.

— The Healing Chaos

“I survived what was meant to erase me, and now my existence is proof that it failed.”