For years, my mind was not a place I wanted to hang out. Too loud, too restless, too tangled up in its own loops. My strategy was simple: drown it, distract it, outrun it. Booze helped for a while. Bad relationships filled the silence. Constant motion kept me from sitting still long enough to actually hear myself. I thought that was strength.
It wasn’t. It was survival. And survival gets you through but it doesn’t give you a life. It’s basically standing on the side of the road forever, watching everyone else pass by.
Now, the only power I care about is the mind itself. Not controlling it like some military operation – just learning how to make it a livable place. A place where I can think without spiraling, where quiet doesn’t feel threatening, where I can laugh at myself instead of tear myself apart.
This work is not glamorous. Healing rarely is. It feels less like a glow-up and more like reorganizing a junk drawer that keeps spilling open. Some days, I get a little order. Other days, everything tumbles out on the floor and I wonder why I even started. Progress comes in inches, not miles. But every inch counts.
And I know I’m fortunate that I get to do this right now. I have the space, the time, the resources to focus on healing, on therapy, on sobriety, on writing my way through the noise. Not everyone does. Not everyone has the option to pause and dig into themselves like this.
I’m not writing this to show off. I’m writing it because I don’t want to forget how rare this opportunity is – and because I want to use it instead of waste it. It would be so easy to coast, to distract myself into oblivion. But I’ve survived too much to let myself drift back into autopilot.
And here’s the thing: it’s not about comparison. It’s about capacity. What can you do with what you’ve got today? I’ve said it before: if it’s “just” one deep breath before the chaos, don’t look at it that way, “just” take it. If it’s scribbling a single sentence in a notebook, write it. If it’s a therapy appointment, meditation, or just not picking up the drink – claim it. That’s the work. That’s the power.
The mind doesn’t change overnight. It’s stubborn. It resists. But it also learns. It surprises me sometimes. It quiets down, it shifts, it holds peace where there used to be static. And if I can turn my head into a place I can actually live in, then that’s power I don’t want to take for granted.
Survival made me strong. Healing makes me whole.
And whole beats strong every damn time.
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