Breaking the Cycle

I was eight years old the first time I got a concussion. I don’t remember much about the moment itself—just the sickening thud of my head hitting the kitchen floor, the world spinning as I tried to get up, and my mother’s sharp voice telling me to quit crying. My father was still yelling in the other room, glass breaking against the walls, my older brother pulling me to my feet with shaking hands.

We never went to the hospital. No one checked if I was okay. By the next morning, it was as if nothing had happened.

That was the day I learned that pain was just something you got used to.

I grew up in a house where fights were louder than laughter, where addiction soaked into the walls, and where love and fear came from the same people. My father’s drinking turned him into a monster, my mother’s silence turned her into a ghost, and my brother and I learned how to survive between them. We learned how to be invisible, how to predict when to run, how to take a hit without making it worse.

For years, I believed that as long as I made it out, I would be fine. I thought survival was the only thing that mattered. I told myself that once I left, none of it would follow me.

I was wrong.

At eighteen, I ran. I packed a bag, moved across the country, and told myself I was free. But the thing about trauma is that it doesn’t stay in the past just because you do. It settles into your bones, hides in the corners of your mind, and whispers in your ear when you least expect it.

I drank too much, spent time with people who reminded me of home in all the worst ways, and pushed away anyone who tried to get close. I got into relationships that mirrored the chaos I had escaped, mistaking intensity for love, mistaking control for care. I told myself I was nothing like my parents, even as I watched myself unravel in ways that felt all too familiar.

The turning point didn’t come all at once. It came in small moments—the empty feeling after another reckless night, the way I still flinched at loud voices, the realization that I didn’t even know who I was outside of survival. It came in the form of my brother calling me one night, voice tight, asking if I was okay because I hadn’t sounded like myself in weeks.

It came when I realized I didn’t have an answer.

I started therapy because I didn’t know what else to do. I expected it to be a waste of time, but my therapist saw through me immediately. He was a quiet, steady man, nothing like the chaos I had grown up with. He didn’t push me to talk about the past right away. Instead, he handed me a notebook.

“Write,” he said. “Everything you don’t say out loud. Everything you think doesn’t matter.”

I stared at the blank pages for days before I wrote anything. Then, one night, I opened it and wrote down every memory I had of that house. Every broken plate, every slammed door, every time I had told myself I was fine. And then I wrote down the truth—I was never fine. I just survived.

Journaling became the thing I turned to when my mind felt too heavy. It was safer than speaking, easier than admitting the pain was still there. And little by little, I started to see patterns in my own words. The way I blamed myself for things that were never my fault. The way I still carried my father’s voice inside my head, telling me I wasn’t good enough.

One session, my therapist told me something that changed everything.

“You’ve been living in fight-or-flight mode your entire life,” he said. “Your brain is wired for survival. But you don’t have to live like that anymore.”

He introduced me to meditation—not as some mystical practice, but as a way to rewire my brain. “You’ve trained yourself to always be on edge,” he explained. “Meditation helps remind your body that you’re safe now.”

At first, it felt impossible. Sitting still made me restless, focusing on my breath felt unnatural. My entire life had been about reacting—how could I just sit and be? But I kept trying. Five minutes a day. Then ten. Then fifteen. And slowly, something shifted.

The nightmares became less intense. My anxiety didn’t disappear, but it no longer controlled me. I started recognizing when I was spiraling, when I was slipping into old patterns, and I learned how to pull myself back.

Healing wasn’t easy. It meant facing the past I had been running from. It meant forgiving myself for the mistakes I had made along the way. It meant learning that love wasn’t supposed to hurt, that safety wasn’t something I had to earn, that I was allowed to exist without bracing for impact.

One day, months later, I flipped through my journal and found an entry from my first week of therapy.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. I don’t know if I can undo what’s been done to me. But maybe—just maybe—I can learn how to live with it.”

I read those words and realized something. I wasn’t just learning to live with it. I was learning to live beyond it.

Now, when I think about that eight-year-old on the kitchen floor, I don’t see weakness. I see a child who survived something no child should have to. And I see the person I am now—the person who refuses to let survival be the only thing I know.

Tonight, I sit on my porch, watching the sun dip below the horizon, feeling the air cool against my skin. For the first time in my life, I feel safe. I feel whole. There is no fear pressing against my ribs, no voice in my head telling me to run.

For the first time, I know what peace feels like. And for the first time, I believe I deserve it.