Here’s the Truth

I used to think the bravest thing I could do was stay.
Now I know the bravest thing I ever did was change.

Four years ago, I started my mental health journey…Quietly. Not because anyone pushed me to do it or because everything around me had fallen apart. I was tired in a way I couldn’t explain anymore and completely Detached from myself. I was Present in every room but completely gone on the inside. I knew something had to give, but in a different way this time.

At the time, my marriage was fucking terrible. My husband was deep in cycles of drinking and gambling. my mental health was out of control. i was reactive, exhausted, and complacent. we were both severely over-weight from drinking and eating, and we fought about everything…and i literally mean everything. but I wasn’t pretending not to see it. I tried to fix it and change him 24/7 and it only got progressively worse. cliche, i know.

but then, something incredible happened…

my brother aka bubba had also been fighting his own battle with addiction for over 20 years, and we had stopped hoping for recovery and started planning for a funeral. he and i were inseparable growing up and watching him deteriorate over two decades was torture. on february 3, 2020, my bubba decided to get honestly and completely sober. after about a year, i started to look at him and think, we can come back from anything. He was living proof that people don’t have to stay stuck forever. so i decided to just stop.

do you remember in 90’s sitcoms when everyone in the scene would freeze, and the main character would break the third wall by talking to the viewers? thats how it felt for me. everything around me froze, and i broke the third wall with myself. i had no idea what to do, and all i knew for sure was that i had to learn to work with what i had. shit!

I decided i did not want to leave my husband, but i didn’t stay because I had hope he’d get sober. I had no reason to believe anything was going to change. But I wasn’t ready to walk away from the life I had worked so hard to build. So I stayed. And instead of waiting around for him to change, I finally started changing myself.

I found a great medical provider (hey lauren!) and got brutally honest with myself. i was the biggest problem in my life. i was causing all of my own pain. no one and nothing can affect me unless i allow it to (the first time my therapist told me that i laughed at her). then, at 35 years old i was diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Binge Eating Disorder. shouldn’t i have some honorary degree for having so many acronyms after my name?? i mean, fuck!

Those diagnoses shocked the shit of me, but they also gave me language for years of trying to make sense of myself — the spirals, the overcorrection, the constant push-pull between doing too much and not being able to do anything at all. The way I’d use food to soothe, and then punish. The way I needed everything to feel or at least look “just right” or else I couldn’t function. The way I allowed other people’s emotions to change me like they were my own. The way I existed in a constant state of victimhood.

It didn’t make the work easier, But it made the work real. And I finally had a place to begin.

At that point, I wasn’t performing for anyone anymore. I wasn’t chasing some breakthrough. I was slowly choosing to live in alignment, one decision at a time. and to be honest, ain’t nothin’ easy ‘bout that mess! you don’t realize how much masking and mirroring and mental gymnastics you have conditioned yourself to do until you unravel it all. no shit… the first thing i did was died my hair back to my natural color (brown). after dying it blonde since i was 13 years old, i truly didn’t know if i really liked having blonde hair or if i was just told i looked good as a blonde. verdict: i like my natural hair color way better, and i haven’t died it in almost 3 years now. learning who you are is equally liberating and heartbreaking.

And then, after all that time and him sinking deaper into alcohol and gambling, my husband remarkably got sober on may 20, 2023.

let me be clear, him getting sober had absolutely nothing to do with my journey. recovery is an inside job and a solo adventure. I actually didn’t trust it at first. I didn’t believe he had changed, and i put a thick ass wall up That first year. there was no way in hell i was going to regress on all of my hard work by pouring my trust into someone who had proven to be untrustworthy for 13 years. When you’ve spent years navigating chaos, peace doesn’t feel peaceful at first. it feels suspicious. But over time, he kept showing up. And I kept healing in my own lane. And for the first time, we were both showing up in the same place, at the same time, fully awake. is this real life? my brother and my husband are both sober and thriving?

then, on april 10, 2024, my mom died.

She was 65, And losing her changed the trajectory of everything. She was strong, complex, intense, funny, stubborn, beautiful, and sad. She gave everything (and sometimes too much) to bubba and me and didn’t always leave much for herself. I’ve done that too. she struggled with her mental health her entire life, and she chose to fight other battles for us. that’s secret that no one tells you. self-awareness isn’t just for those who choose inner-peace. it’s also for those who take an alternate route knowing what they are losing and still being ok with it. But I promised her I’d do it differently now. I promised her I’d take care of myself. i promised her i wouldn’t alter who i am for anyone…not even my daughter. And I’m still working on what that means, every day.

i love you, mom, and i miss you everyday and forever. one day i’ll tell your story too.

But this isn’t a blog about a marriage or family or grief. This is a bolg about me.

About how motherhood didn’t pause just because I was in the middle of unraveling and rebuilding. About how I had to learn to parent while re-parenting myself. about how i chose to stay in a toxic relationship but learn to heal in the process. about how i had to stop trying to save the people i love. About how grief came in like a tsunami when I lost my mom last year and how it hasn’t left.

I don’t tell this story to motivate anyone.
I don’t share it because I think people should do what I did.
I share it because we need more space to say, this is what happened, and this is how it felt.

I loved people I couldn’t change. I tried to be someone I wasn’t, to keep things from falling apart. I stayed in places that drained me. I wanted everyone else to get better, so I didn’t have to sit with myself. And when that didn’t work, I stopped trying to fix the people around me and started telling the truth about the one person I could finally take responsibility for — me.

I’m not trying to be anyone’s example. I’m just trying to be honest.

This is what it looked like to stay.
This is what it looked like to stop running.
This is what it looked like to live with grief, anxiety, diagnoses, and decades of emotional survival and to keep going anyway.

Not because it’s pretty.
Not because it’s inspiring.
Because it’s real.

If any part of that sounds familiar, I hope you feel seen. showing up today is enough because you are enough.

– Jess