Yesterday I was with a dear friend, & we were talking about the future. What our future plans were 15 years from now & where we wanted to be. When it came my turn to talk about my future & what I had planned for myself, I was blank. I said, “It’s hard for me to think about the future. I just don’t want to get my hopes up.” While yes that is true, I have thought about it more, & I know what I want for my future… safety. I want to feel safe in my own skin. I want to feel safe in my relationship/marriage. I want to know I have a place & belong. These are all the things I have been fighting for the past 10 years since my wreck & everything that happened after. My traumatic brain injury stole the safety I once felt within my own body. My abusive/controlling relationship stole my feeling of safety & replaced it with the feeling of doom. Replaced it with me only being able to survive & not live.

Over the past few years, I have been trying to rejoin the living, but I still always hit the same block. My wall or I should say walls. The walls I have built to protect myself from anymore harm, rejection, heartache, & pain. I have slowly been able to let down a few walls, but there seems to always be a barrier between me & others. If I’m honest, that is the way I “like” it. It gives me the false sense of security. The false sense of protection. I’m terrified of letting someone see behind the final wall. I was asked why that is & what I think is so bad behind it. My answer was a lot of issues but that is honestly not the real reason. What is honestly behind the last wall remaining is a scared hurt little girl. I know I am 33yrs old now but behind that wall is all my hurt. All my fear. That’s my last bit of my pure self that I am terrified to be taken or hurt.

I came out the other side of the wreck, my heartbreak somewhat changed. I locked away the last bit of my pure self that I knew was too tender to re-emerge at that time & since then I have become a stronger, more compassionate woman but along the way to becoming the woman I am today I never revisited the part I locked up. Once I felt strong again I was too scared to give her life because I was terrified of the pain I might have to feel again with her re-emerging. I don’t know if anybody who reads this will be able to identify with this, but I do know we all have felt pain. We all have felt fear, & we all know what it’s like to have to comeback from some loss however small or big it may be. The only thing I know now is you have to find the courage within to allow yourself to be unapologetically you. Not what you think you need to be for someone or what you think you need to be to survive. Just be you. All of you. Today is the day to unlock the parts of you that you thought you needed to keep hidden & show the world the beautiful imperfect mess that you are, that we all are.