Today feels like a milestone, to me, because a year ago tonight I was the closest I have ever been to throwing in the towel entirely. I spent a couple hours of the night trying to make that happen.(within hours of that I was in the car traveling) I was in excruciating pain, I felt I was less than nothing to some of the people I loved most, a burden and liability to the rest. I believed a lot of lies about my worth, some that had been deeply ingrained my whole life. I just didn’t want to hurt like this anymore and I felt I absolutely could not face the future, especially the next few days.

By God’s Grace I made it through the night, and the next day, and the day after that. For awhile it was truly one day at a time, and that was enough.

I’m in a totally different place today, because I started caring for myself. I started telling myself I am worth caring for and worth valuing. I started digging into the truth, right at it’s source. I started with getting Zephaniah 3:17 tattooed on my arm so I’d see it all day everyday, alongside a lotus to remind me that I can begin to bloom, even in the darkness.

None of those problems ever fully went away. Every feeling I had that night I still wrestle with some days, some of them a LOT of days. There are still conversations I need to have, when I have healed enough that a negative outcome won’t send me spiraling.

But y’all, a year after the darkest night of my soul, that followed seven months of almost equally dark nights, I do not want my life to end. I have things I am looking forward to, victories I’m celebrating, relationships that are growing. I have people who I can put my heart out to who, instead of telling me to suck it up and not make it about me when I’m hurting, tell me it’s okay to hurt, to feel my feelings. I don’t spend 98% of my time with Scott crying In desperation and heartache. A lot of the growth has been in ways not visible on the outside-a lot has been allowing myself to see wrongs done to me as wrong and not just what I deserve because I’m so worthless, and learning to be able to separate my hurt from the other side of the circumstance. It’s possible to want the best for someone wholeheartedly or have compassion for them and the cause of their hurtful behavior *without* making excuses and saying their hurtful behavior was okay or deserved. That’s HUGE for me.

I am not where I want to be. I miss my family, I miss my church, I miss my friends, I miss being free of anxiety. But I am so far from where I was a year ago, in so many ways.

This is long, but I wrote it to say, there is hope. There is healing. It may not go at the pace you want, or look how you expect, but it’s there.

If you want to talk, I’m here. I love you and you are amazing.