The Rebuilding of Me
Chapter Five of The Woods Behind Me
After the storm of that year — the boyfriend, the doctor, the pills that dragged me under — there wasn’t a clean moment where I got better.
No dawn breaking. No swelling music.
Just a slow crawl back into myself, piece by stubborn piece.
People think healing looks like strength. But real healing looks like exhaustion — like staring at the ceiling at three in the morning wondering who you are now, like asking yourself if you’ll ever feel like a whole person again.
I didn’t. Not right away.
My sense of self had been stripped down to bone. Every certainty I had about the world — about trust, safety, love, grown-ups, medicine — had been shaken until nothing made sense anymore. And the fallout showed up in ways I didn’t expect.
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