To Me in 10 Years: I Built a Life They Said I'd Never Have

Hey you.

Ten years.

Take a second and really let that land — because ten years ago, your world revolved around survival. Around managing crises. Around holding yourself together with duct tape and sheer fucking will. Around making it through the day without imploding, relapsing, disappearing, or giving up entirely.

And now?

Now you’re here.

Not because life went easy on you.

Not because you were rescued.

Not because the pain magically vanished.

You’re here because you learned how to keep going without abandoning yourself.

Ten years ago, you were defined by what hurt you. By courtrooms, paperwork, diagnoses, trauma histories, and the way people reduced you to your lowest moments. You were fighting for your kids, your sanity, your safety, your future — all at the same time.

And you were tired in a way people don’t talk about.

The kind of tired that seeps into your bones.

The kind of tired that makes hope feel irresponsible.

But look at you now.

Ten years later, I hope you finally understand something you couldn’t back then:

You were never broken — you were overwhelmed.

And you adapted.

You learned how to regulate instead of react.

You learned how to pause instead of self-destruct.

You learned how to tell the difference between love and attachment, safety and familiarity, peace and boredom.

You learned how to leave.

Leave relationships that cost you your dignity.

Leave situations that fed your addiction.

Leave patterns that kept you stuck in pain because pain was familiar.

That alone is revolutionary.

Ten years ago, you were fighting everything at once: mental illness that didn’t give you days off, addiction that promised relief and delivered hell, grief that came in waves, and a system that punished pain instead of treating it.

And you still showed up.

You showed up for your kids — even when you weren’t sure you deserved to be alive.

You showed up for yourself — even when you didn’t like who you were yet.

You showed up for healing — even when it felt slow, unfair, and lonely.

So if you’re reading this and thinking, “I still have bad days,” good.

Bad days don’t mean failure.

They mean you’re human in a life you actually give a shit about.

This letter isn’t just for you.

This is for everyone who clawed their way out of something they weren’t supposed to survive.

For the people who had legal trouble and rebuilt anyway.

For the ones who lost custody and never stopped loving their kids.

For the ones who got their kids back and still carry the fear of losing them again.

For the parents who buried children and kept breathing out of pure love.

For the people who survived domestic violence and had to unlearn that fear isn’t passion.

For the addicts who didn’t quit perfectly — but kept quitting anyway.

For the mentally ill who got tired of apologizing for having symptoms.

For the queer people who changed labels, questioned themselves, hid, came out, went back in, came out again — and realized none of that made them fake.

For the ones who weren’t out yet and still aren’t — and are allowed to take their time.

For the people grieving quietly while functioning loudly.

For the ones who carried weight no one clapped for.

Ten years later, I hope you see how much space you’ve created.

Space between impulse and action.

Space between feeling and catastrophe.

Space between who you were and who you’re becoming.

You don’t live in constant crisis anymore.

You don’t need chaos to feel alive.

You don’t mistake intensity for intimacy.

That’s not boring.

That’s freedom.

I hope by now you’ve stopped introducing yourself by your trauma. Not because it didn’t matter — but because it no longer owns you. It’s part of your story, not the headline.

You are not:

• your worst relapse
• your worst relationship
• your worst mental health episode
• your worst legal moment
• your worst year

You are the sum of every time you chose to stay when leaving felt easier.

Ten years ago, you survived out of desperation.

Now I hope you’re living out of intention.

I hope your home feels safer than your past ever did.

I hope your nervous system rests more than it panics.

I hope you’ve learned how to apologize without self-flagellation and take accountability without shame.

I hope you protect your peace like it’s sacred — because it is.

And if love is in your life, I hope it’s calm. Real. Boring in the best way. The kind of love that doesn’t trigger your fight-or-flight. The kind that doesn’t punish you for being human. The kind that feels like exhaling.

You earned that.

Ten years is proof that healing compounds.

That staying sober — or harm-reducing — or trying again matters.

That therapy, meds, boundaries, rest, honesty, and time actually do something.

That breaking cycles doesn’t happen overnight — but it does happen.

And listen closely, because this matters:

You didn’t become soft because you healed.

You became dangerous in the best way.

Dangerous to systems that rely on your silence.

Dangerous to people who benefit from your self-doubt.

Dangerous to cycles that depended on you hating yourself.

So yeah — fuck you to everything that tried to trap you in who you used to be.

Fuck the people who said you’d never change.

Fuck the ones who watched you struggle and chose judgment instead of empathy.

Fuck the voices that told you your trauma disqualified you from peace.

They were wrong.

Ten years later, you are living proof that healing isn’t a straight line — but it is real.

And if someone reading this is still in the middle of it, let this be the message they borrow from you:

You don’t have to have it all figured out.

You just have to keep choosing yourself — again and again and again.

Ten years ago, you were surviving.

Now?

You’re building.

And that’s louder than any comeback story.

— The Healing Chaos

“I didn’t just survive what tried to destroy me — I outgrew it.”