essays from the other side

It’s time to get up now.

The sunlight touched my face as I glanced in the direction of the back door. The sun was peeking through the trees at the perfect angle. How long had I been on the floor? The sun wasn’t even coming through the door when I first laid down.

It’s time to get up now.

I closed my eyes and sighed. I wiped the residual tears from my eyes right before sitting up. That voice – my voice – echoed once again the line my mom would say when we were children and wouldn’t get up in the morning. The peppy “Up and at ‘em!” was the first attempt. The second attempt was not quite so chipper. In my adulthood, it became the mantra I repeated to myself when moving felt impossible. 

I could technically feel my body but I also could not feel my body. Everything felt numb and distant, as if I were sitting in the backseat watching myself drive. My face hurt. It was swollen and red from crying. My singular emotional support had died unexpectedly and I was left drowning in my grief. I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle and it had only been a few days. 

The next few months were both painstakingly slow to pass and also vanished in the blink of an eye. I felt paralyzed. My PTSD had been recently triggered by a violent assault when I was walking home, and a few weeks later I had to experience the helplessness of watching my four-legged best friend die with absolutely no warning. The vet had cried with me as she reassured me there was no way I could have known that cancer was slowly killing my familiar.

And so I was left alone in a house haunted by memories of my emotionally abusive ex, and where I’d found my dog when I got home from the gym and realized something was very wrong. When I could clear my mind of death and past relationships, the PTSD flashbacks and nightmares would creep in and rob me of what little bit of energy I still had. I felt hollow. I was not well. I have not been well.

I cried every day for four months. Some days were the big cries, the UGLY cries, the cries where it feels like your soul is leaving your body. Other days were small tears, brief moments when I’d come home and realize I wasn’t going to be greeted at the door. I felt more alone than I ever have, and when I feel alone I tend to want to die, so that was also fun to deal with.

I always know I need to start taking big action to help myself when I start fixating on my death. I’ve had suicidal ideation for most of my life; my depression runs deep and started when I was in the single digits, so I know when it’s time to sound the alarm and when it’s fine to just sit and rot in the void. It’s often a comforting daydream to write off my problems as something that would go away if I ceased to exist. The red flag is when I start to figure out the details, or when I veto certain methods because of who would have to clean up the mess left behind. I couldn’t utilize my previous method because it would leave behind a body that presumably my mom would have to deal with, I didn’t want to put her through that. Driving into traffic would drag others into my decision, I wasn’t okay with that. This time around I found myself staring at parking garages, particularly one very tall parking garage downtown that was in perfect view as I walked out of the commercial gym I was somehow still able to drag myself to a few times a week. 

It was the tallest parking garage in town. It towered over the downtown area, and often begged the question, “did we really need to make it THAT tall?” The top floor had the typical fencing that is designed to deter people from jumping, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard to hop over. It was right by the police station, so I could just jump, be done, and they’d clean everything up and notify my family. Something snapped awake inside of me when I started thinking that would be a good plan and that’s how I should do it and I realized that I wasn’t just hanging out in the void of my depression, I was teetering on the edge of being swallowed by the vortex forever. One thing I learned a long time ago was that if it all ends, then there’s no chance it can get better. 

So I did what I needed to do. I booked an appointment with a new therapist, and I adopted another dog. The therapist wound up being a huge waste of time, we were not a good fit, she didn’t understand a lot of what I was trying to explain about my life, and would often focus on things that I didn’t want or need to address. It’s hard going back to therapy when you’ve had a few rounds before. I went in with a bullet point list of concrete things I wanted to talk about and work on in therapy, and 50 minutes later after dwelling on my relationship with my parents for the majority of the session, she asked me why I was there. I booked another appointment and then cancelled it a couple of days later. 

The new dog was a much better solution. While there were days my depression was thick and I struggled to function, I’d still drag myself out to the yard to throw a ball with my new girl. And like my first dog, having something that needed me to stay alive pushed my suicidal ideation to the back of my mind, and eventually out of my mind entirely. 

The majority of the calendar year was still a struggle. I felt so lost. Every aspect of my life changed. My career changed, I finished graduate school, my dog died, I adopted a new dog, I’ve spent most of the year trying to figure out who I am in this new chapter. This life still doesn’t quite feel like it’s mine. I wanted to celebrate finishing my master’s degree, but everyone was mostly busy so no plans were ever made. My family celebration revolved mostly around my dad and his poor health and mobility. The dinner celebration wasn’t at my favorite restaurant, but at an option that sounded good to my parents that he could walk in and out of easily. I’m used to putting my wants aside for other people’s needs, but as a 33 year old single woman with no children, I had wanted to be celebrated in a way that apparently only happens at weddings and baby showers. Turns out nobody really cares about going back to school in your thirties because you want more out of your life. 

I didn’t realize how much time I’d lost until somewhat recently when I was trying to tell a story about something that happened in January, and I got mixed up thinking it had happened in January 2024. It felt so long ago, it couldn’t have been this year. But as I mapped out the preceding events, I realized I was off a year in my retelling. I typically have a nearly photographic memory, so this was a jarring experience to me that illustrated how badly I was hurting. 

This week was the first anniversary of the violent assault that kicked off the most brutal ending to a year that I’ve ever experienced. I had a panic attack Saturday night that lasted for almost an hour. I ugly cried and hyperventilated and tried to practice my grounding skills and other bullshit coping skills that feel so stupid to try and use in the moment of pure distress. My young dog sat quietly by me and would occasionally lick the tears off my face and snuggle into my lap as my first dog once had when I’d have these episodes. Once it had passed, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and try to get some sleep. It’s always jarring to see yourself after an episode like that. Red faced, swollen, no life left in your eyes. I felt like a corpse that had somehow retained the ability to breathe. I washed my face and crawled into bed, my new girl snuggled up under the covers and glued to my side. 

I hadn’t clocked the panic attack as residual PTSD until the nightmares began. I thought I was a little hormonal, feeling a little lonely, all the usual things that happen to a woman when she’s had a million shit relationships while watching all of her friends marry amazing people. But my dream that night ended with my face hitting the pavement and I shot up in bed like I’d been shocked. I felt exhausted and decided to let myself rot for the day. I wound up sleeping most of the day with no issues, but that next night I woke up almost every hour plagued by harrowing nightmares of assault. I unfortunately have had multiple instances, and somehow the older events never quite go away either. My dreams were of me sprinting down the trail I was attacked on a year ago, gasping for air, desperately trying to run away from someone. I’d have glimpses of what I do remember from that night: touching my face only to see how much blood transfered to my hands, waking up the next morning stuck to my pillow case because I was still bleeding, and the feeling of my left cheekbone being ground into pavement. Other older flashbacks always found their way in there too. Whether it was a “friend” screaming in my face demanding that he should get to date me/sleep with me because it was “his turn”, or a crush not taking no for an answer and dragging me out of a bar by my wrist to go home with him. Men are not kind to women. Men have not been kind to me. 

Every time I woke up in a cold sweat and a panic, it seemed like my mood dropped further. I wound up sicker than shit with a low-grade fever and I called out of work for two days. I could sleep better during the day, so at least there was that, but I also haven’t even been in this job for six months yet so using what little PTO I have is always a pain. But I did that thing we’re supposed to do and I listened to my body. I was wrecked and needed to sleep. So I let myself sleep.

It’s amazing the realizations you have when you just let yourself rest and let your mind wander to where it needs to wander to. For me, it sunk in that it is literally almost November 2025 and I am still mentally stuck in early October 2024. I don’t know how that much time has passed, because I have mostly felt frozen. I reflected on my loneliness, my envy of my friends who’ve found their person, and how my people-pleasing tendencies often created space for abuse in my life. It’s okay, I can deal. Whatever you want. What do you need? I’m fine. Of course manipulators find me, I hold their hand and give them the space to manipulate. I am so deprived of love that I’ve become desperate for it, thus allowing people to stay in my life who openly disrespect me and cause me harm. 

And I don’t want to talk about the self-love bullshit and how if I love myself more then this won’t be an issue and I’ll find someone. Because I love myself. I’m fucking brilliant and funny and talented and a goddamn asset. All of my relationships have played out the exact same way – the things that attract a man to me eventually become the reasons he hates me. He’ll demand for me to change/shrink/be less in his own unique way until I eventually wither to the point where I have to get the hell out of dodge and I end it. He often doesn’t recognize that he did anything wrong, usually because I am so defeated by the end of it that I don’t have it in me to argue anymore. 

I either tolerate breadcrumbs from someone who won’t commit or I’m tolerating some form of toxicity/manipulation/abuse. Both are bullshit and a waste of my time. Maybe it’s the post-depressive episode clarity or Scorpio season entering the chat, but I’m just over all of it. I’m done being empty. I’m done being numb. I’m done tolerating bullshit from manchildren, and I’m done allowing insecure manbabies into my home and bed. I truly give zero fucks at this point. I’ve lost it all and survived. Try me.