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The day I turned 18, I woke up early, packed my belongings into the trunk of my maroon 1996 Ford Escort and drove out of town. I willed myself not to look in the rearview mirror as I left my childhood home and drove into my future. I’d like to say no one handed me…
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I have drafts of unwritten posts. I start one, lose interest, walk away. Then another, and another. And I can’t figure out why I am having such a block in emoting via the written word, other than the fact that so much has changed for me since I started this blog. So much has changed…
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The drink appeared in front of me at the bar while I chatted with a friend. I looked up at the bartender inquisitively and she pointed to a young man seated at the end of the bar. His smooth face, the bright smile, a little hungry. What is wrong with this kid? Why is he…
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I was auditing my posts here after writing about therapy rates increasing yesterday. I’ve been thinking a lot about the story I am telling, the energy I am sending out to the world. Considering how much I have healed. Like a doctor wondering if a patient can breathe on their own after the breathing tube…
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The victim mindset says: I am Tantalus beneath the fruit tree, hungry, and unable to reach it. I am Tantalus, thirsty, floundering in a pool of water that cannot be drunk. I drive 50 miles to my therapist’s office every other week. We are a year into forming a patient/clinician relationship and working through what…
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The brutality of single motherhood is a living river with no beginning and no end. I am doing it all, and doing none of it well. There are days I open my eyes and have to box breathe myself out of a panic attack. Will there be enough to pay the propane bill if they…
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I’m trying to pick up pieces I didn’t know had broken away. Pieces that fell around me every time my heart broke. Pieces that I didn’t even know existed every time life disappointed me. Running through my hands and pouring out of my eyes. Things I’m losing over and over again and can’t even remember…
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I cried in the shower this morning. Hot, desperate sobs under the steam. I’m ripping off Band-Aids and pulling out boxes stuffed with trauma. Some days I really have it together, but for months now I’ve just been…raw. Unhinged. Unbridled emotions run amok. All the careful compartmentalization is coming undone and suddenly I am forced…
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While based on true events quoted to me, these stories are fiction. Sometimes women break hearts as often as men do, and sometimes we forget that toxic patterns go both ways. Part 1 You genuinely loved him, once upon a time. You traced your name across his heart, built a future with him, whispered to…