Loving You While Losing Control

 There's a particular kind of grief that comes from realizing you hurt the person you love the most. 

Not because you didn't care. 

Not because you were cruel.

But because your mind pulled the emergency brake and you lost control of the wheel.

People talk about trauma like it's something that lives quietly in the past, like a memory you can visit when you choose. But trauma isn't polite. It doesn't wait it's turn. It doesn't knock. It hijacks your body, your voice, your reactions -- especially when you care the most.

Especially when you're scared of losing them. 

I loved you in ways that felt holy. In ways that felt safe. In ways that made me believe, for once, that I could rest. And that's the cruel irony -- because when someone finally feels like home, your nervous system panics. It doesn't trust peace. It looks for danger where there is none. It confuses closeness with threat. 

So when I lost control, it wasn't anger -- it was terror. 

It wasn't manipulation -- it was survival. 

It wasn't intentional harm -- it was an old wound screaming through a new moment. 

But intentions don't erase impact. 

And that's the part that breaks me. 

Because loving someone doesn't mean you didn't hurt them. 

And being mentally ill doesn't mean the damage didn't count. 

My trauma runs deep -- but what people don't see is that it isn't just old. 

The last traumatic event that shattered me happened only a few months ago. Close enough that my body hasn't vaught up to time yet. Close enough that my nervous system still thinks it's happening. Close enough that every small conflict feels like standing back inside the wreckage.

People hear "a few months ago" and assume I should be better by now. They don't see the nights it replays on a loop. The way my chest tightens without warning. The way my head spirals faster because the wound is still open, still raw, still bleeding under the surface. 

No one really understands how deeply it scarred me -- how it rewired my sense of safety, trust, and control. How it took coping skills I worked years to build and knocked them loose. How it made me more reactive, more afraid, more fragile in moments that used to feel manageable. 

And layered on top of that is the reality of living with Borderline and Bipolar 1. 

People hear the diagnoses, but they don't undertsnad what it feels like inside the moment. They don't understand how emotions don't just hurt -- they flood. How fear doesn't whisper -- it screams. How thoughts don't line up politely; they colide, overlap, and turn inward all at once. 

When I'm triggered, it feeks like I'm trying to stay grounded while my own mind turns against me. Like reality starts to blur at the edges. Like I'm fighting to stay present while everything in me is pulling me back into survival mode. I'm not being dramatic -- I'm not fully here. 

And in those moments, other people's reactions matter more than they'll ever know. 

A sharp tone. 

A raised voice. 

A dismissive word. 

An accusation. 

They don't pull me back into reality -- they push me further out of it. 

When it feels like everyone plus my own thoughts are attacking me, what I need isn't logic or lectures or ultimatums. I don't need to be told to calm down. I don't need my pain analyzed in real time. I need calm. Patience. Empathy. Understanding. 

Most of all, I need to be held. 

I need to be allowed to cry without it becoming dangerous. To sit with someone while my nervous system burns itself out. To be reminded -- gently -- that I am not under attack anymore, even if my brain hasn't caught up yet. 

But instead, fear often takes over. 

And that's when another instainct kicks in -- the urge to leave. 

To walk away. To shut down. To push everyone back. To say things that make people stop caring on purpose. Because somewhere in my spiraling head, it feels safer if I'm hated than if I'm loved. 

If I leave first, no one can be hurt by what I'm thinking. 

If I make myself the villian, the damage stops with me. 

If people don't care anymore, then my absence won't wound them. 

It isn't that I want to disappear -- It's that I'm trying to protect the people I love from the storm inside me, even if it means destroying myself in the process. 

And then there's the way people use medication as an exit. 

The moment my pain becomes inconvenient, overwhelming, or too real, suddenly I'm told to "take my meds." Not with care. Not with concern. But as a way to stop dealing with me. As if medication is a mute button. As if pills exist to make me quieter, smaller, easier to tolerate. 

They don't ask what happened. 

They don't ask what triggered me. 

They don't ask how bad it is inside my head. 

They just want me manageable, 

Medication becomes dismissal instead of support. Proof that I'm still strggling, I must be failing at healing. As if trauma follows a schedule. As if medication erases flashbacks, overrides PTSD, or deletes fear on command. 

Meds help me survive -- but they don't make me less human. And being told to medicate my pain feels like being told my pain is an inconvenience no one wants to witness. 

And then there's the moment I stop hiding. 

The moment my mental illness actually shows its symptoms -- not the polished version people claim to understand. The shaking. The dissociation. The panic. The spiraling thoughts. The loss of control I work so hard every day to contain. 

People say they support mental health -- until it looks like mental illness. 

Until I cry too hard. Speak too fast. Shut down. React wrong. Until I don't perform wellness in a way that makes them comfortable. Then suddenly I'm "acting crazy." Dramatic. Unstable. Too mcuh. 

They forget that symptoms are the illness. 

They get angry at me for showing exactly what they said they understood. They punish me for not hiding well enough. They expect calm and restraint from someone whose nervous system is actively on fire. 

And it teaches you something dangerous -- that love is conditional. That support only exists if you suffer quietly. That your pain is only valid when it stays invisible. 

So you learn to mask. To swallow it. To disappear parts of yourself just to keep the peace.

And when the mask finally cracks, they act shocked -- like you betrayed them by being sick out loud. 

And then there are the moments people don't like to talk about at all.

The moments when I was already breaking -- hands shaking, chest tight, words falling apart -- and you reached for the sharpest things you knew about me and used them in the heat of the moment. 

Not because you were evil. 

Not always because you mean to destroy me. 

But because pain makes people reckless. 

You knew my soft spots. You knew the history I barely survived. You knew the fears I trusted you with then I thought love meant safety. And suddenly those truths became weapons. 

"You're too much"

"This is why people leave."

"You're acting crazy"

"You always do this"

And just like that, I wasn't in the room anymore. 

I was back there. 

Back in the moments my body remebers but my mouth can't explain. Back in survival mode -- where my brain is screaming get out, get safe, dissapear or defend yourself. 

That's what trauma does. It doesn't escalate -- it overrides. 

So when my weaknesses were thrown at me while I was already drowing, something in my snapped -- not in rage, but in terror. My voice got louder. My reactions got bigger. My control slipped further through my fingers. Not because I wanted to hurt you -- but because my body thought I was being attacked. 

And that's the cruelest loop of all. 

You hurt me. 

My trauma exploded. 

My reaction hurt you more. 

And suddenly I was the villain in a story that started with me begging not to be hurt. 

I wish people understood that losing control during a trigger isn't a choice. It isn't a tantrum. It isn't manipulation. It's your nervous syetmk pulling the fire alarm because it thinks the building is burning -- even if the flames aren't real anymore. 

But here is the truth I still have to carry, even when it feels unfair:

Being triggered explains the reaction. 

It does not erase the damage. 

Two things can be true at once:

• It was wrong to use my trauma against me. 
• I am still responsible for how far I spiraled after. 

And that's where the grief really lives -- in realizing that sometimes both people are bleeding, and neither knows how to stop the hemorrhage without hurting the other. 

Love doesn't always fail because it isn't real.

Sometimes it fails because both people are fighting ghosts while standing in the same room. 

And the hardest part isn't admitting I was triggered. 

It's admitting that I need to protect the people I love from the parts of me that only know how to survive -- until I learn how to heal. 

~The Healing CHaos

"I didn't push you away because I didn't love you. I pushed you away because I was trying to keep you alive while I was drowning."