Why I Came Back
After One Year Offline, I'm Back -- But With Purpose And On My Terms
For years, I ignored the voice. It had been there all along—whispering, nudging, sometimes screaming — but I didn’t know how to listen. It was so loud it might as well have been screaming in my ear, but I did what most people with unhealed childhood trauma, CPTSD, undiagnosed autism, (most likely 100% sure) ADHD, PMDD, a lifelong poverty mentality, a negative mindset, depression, and anxiety do when faced with an uncomfortable truth — I drank over it, yelled over it, distracted and numbed myself until it got quieter and quieter.
The voice wasn’t some mystical entity, as you know. It was just me — perhaps the version of me who actually knew what she was doing. My higher self. It warned me about the men who would break me. It told me to walk away from the job that was draining the life out of me. It begged me to put the drink down, the phone down, to turn off the TV. It kept reminding me that I wasn’t meant to stay in a world that was never built for me.
But I didn’t know how to listen. And when it got too loud — so loud that the only way I could sleep was to drink until I passed out — I did everything I could to drown it out.
And I did. Over and over and over again.
That’s the thing about survival mode — it convinces you that ignoring yourself is the only way to stay safe. If you spent your whole life being taught that your own instincts were wrong, you eventually stop listening to them. And if you ignore your own knowing long enough, the only way out is to burn everything down and start over.
Which is exactly what I did.
The Slingshot
People talk about "awakening" like it’s some peaceful, yoga-on-the-beach moment of enlightenment. That’s not how it happens. The real thing feels like being yanked back in a slingshot and launched into the unknown, with no idea where you’re going to land.
In 2020, I finally listened to the voice. It wasn’t subtle.
“If you sit your ass in that office chair one more time, you’ll be sitting there for life.”
It was like it knew something I didn’t (duh), like the universe was shifting behind the scenes, setting up a trap disguised as an opportunity — just good enough to make me think I could settle, just tempting enough to make me sell my soul without realizing it. So I walked into my boss’s office, quit on the spot, and left without looking back. Two weeks later, the whole world shut down, and suddenly, the job I’d abandoned was being done from home — by everyone but me.
{Deep breath moment}
The universe has a sense of humor.
I could say I had no regrets, but that would be a lie. I had plenty. The kind that keep you up at night and make you wonder if you’ve ruined everything. The kind that send you into a spiral so deep you don’t recognize yourself when you finally crawl out of it.
And I did spiral. I had quit my job, moved my family to a different state, moved to a house in the middle of nowhere, and started systematically cutting out every addiction, every distraction, every “friend”, every crutch that had kept me upright for years. No alcohol. No nicotine. No caffeine. No numbing.
At first, it felt like I had done everything "right" and ended up in hell anyway. I had the “peace” I’d been craving, and I hated it. It was too quiet. Too real. When you take away all the noise, you’re left alone with yourself, and if you don’t like who you are, that’s a big problem.
And I didn’t.
The Cost of Leaving
What they don’t tell you about walking away from everything is that at first, it feels like death. Not just the metaphorical kind. Your brain, which has been wired for survival, goes into full panic mode. It tells you to go back. To pick up the drink, the relationship, the old patterns. To do anything except sit in the emptiness.
And most people do. That’s why so many never make it out. Because when the pain comes, they mistake it for failure instead of proof that they’re finally getting somewhere.
I spent four and a half years in that in-between space — the land between. No longer bound to the old world, but not fully rooted in the new one either. I had finally stopped running. Isolation became hibernation mode, a time of shedding everything that no longer fit. I didn’t yet know how to move forward, but I kept taking small steps — using the tools, showing up for myself, holding on to radical faith that things were already shifting in my favor.
And then, slowly, they did.
The voice came back — not as a warning this time, but as a knowing. A quiet certainty. The same one that had once told me to leave was now telling me it was time to move forward. That I didn’t need to keep looking for the next step, because everything had already worked itself out — I just had to walk.
It was time to return. Not to the old life, but to the world in a new way.
Why I Came Back
For a long time, I thought I had to be fully healed before I could help anyone else. But watching others heal out loud taught me the truth — healing isn’t a finish line, and perfection isn’t what people need. They need real. They need truth. They need someone to say, “I know what it feels like to want to disappear. And I know what it takes to find your way back.”
I came back because I know there’s someone sitting in their car right now, staring at the steering wheel, wondering if they’re ever going to feel okay again. I know what it’s like to wake up every day and feel like you’ve already lost before you even get out of bed. I know what it’s like to go so deep into the darkness that you don’t believe there’s a way out.
And I also know that there is.
That’s why I’m here — to be real, to tell my story, and to trust that it will find the one who needs it most. The one who is where I was. The one who thinks no one else understands.
Because I do.
And if I could make it out, so can you.
You just have to take the first step.
And then another.
And another.
Until one day, you realize you’re not just surviving anymore.
You’re actually living.
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