my 2 year retrospective

So, my birthday is in 2 days. I'm going to be 27. For the girl that figured that she'd never see her 25th birthday, I'm doing really damn well. I started thinking about this on my walk home from dropping Sara off at school today. So here I am, writing.

I've had a life that would fit really well in a horror story. It's one of those life stories that you hear and don't want to believe is true simply because life just *can't* be that fucked. It can. Surviving is a huge accomplishment, thriving, wow, what a concept.

The way I survived growing up in hell was making death a best friend. I decided if I hit the point where I just couldn't fight anymore, if I couldn't keep even the smallest part of myself sane, I would commit suicide. I never wanted to be an attempted suicide, so part of my promise to myself was I would only attempt if sure, and I would make damn sure that even if I messed it up, nobody would find me in time. I lived with this promise for years. I would wake up in the morning and think "If today is the day, ok. But until I'm sure, we fight.", and at night I'd go to sleep thinking the same thing.

One of the things that always bothered me was I could never see my life past 24. I could daydream all I wanted, but everything stopped before my 25th birthday. I eventually decided that it meant I'd lose the fight by then. So in a lot of ways, turning 25 was a major turning point in my life. I was still alive, but my life was still hell.

In May 2000, I was accepted on Disability Support. I had a diagnosis that finally fit me exactly, and explained why I was the way I was. I was at the end of a 1 ½ year relationship, with a nightmarish break-up. I was hurting in a way that made my soul bleed. I also had good friends that held me up when I couldn't anymore. My life was chaos, killing me, yet I didn't know how to live without it. I turned 25.

That magical number. 25. I had MADE IT! I lived through hell, and came out the other side, damaged as fuck, bleeding and broken, but I was alive. And where there is life, there is hope. So I looked at the Chaos. The chaos *I* had made for myself, because I only knew chaos and it was comfortable.

I saw what I had become, and I was sickened. I was soul-bleeding for a man with no honour, no compassion. A man that accused me of stealing his life from him. I was *grovelling*. I was abusing my self and my soul. I had given up priority to the people that really mattered for this man.

So, I wrote, and I cried, and I told myself that the Chaos was going to stop and I was going to truly live my life. I took $500 of my Disability back pay, dressed up in my new dress, met him at a bar, cleared my debts and walked out of his life with my head held high. A month later I walked out of Toronto and into the home of two of my lifelong best friends.

It's all been getting better since then. Really slowly, but steadily. I learned how to make *me* the most important person in my life. Not my friends, not my fiancé, not my family, not even my daughter. Me. I've been told that is selfish. Not so. The way I lived before was selfish. Serving my self and my soul up on a platter to anyone that wanted a piece, was selfish. Living in Chaos and dragging everyone else in after me, was selfish. Taking care of myself first means I can honestly share me with no reservations and in powerful, beautiful ways. That's not selfish.

I'm sitting here, with so much to say. My fiancé is sitting behind me, clicking away on his computer. This is the best relationship of my life. He's not like the rest of the guys I would choose. They were all Knights in Shining Armour, coming to save me from my horrible life. Which feels really great until the point where they'd realize that I didn't need rescuing, and I'd realize that for me to be saved, I'd always have to be the Damsel in Distress. So not me.

Mike has no interest in saving me from anything. He supports me, and does a bunch of "Rah! Rah!"ing but it's never been a Knight thing. He lets me be me, with no expectations of me being anything else, ever. It's pretty damn cool.

Speaking of cool, I was walking back from Sara's school and I realized… I'm not scared anymore. The PTSD is still there, of course, but it doesn't cripple my life now. Going outside of my home is no longer an exercise in fighting terror. I have good days, I have bad days. But most of the time I have ok days, and god, that's heaven.

Here I sit, 2 days away from my 27th birthday. My life is full, and I'm thriving. I have a fledgling handmade cosmetics business, that I adore. I have a beautiful daughter that thinks I'm an "awesome mom". I have a kick-ass fiancé that puts up with my shit and is my bestest friend ever. My life is relatively Chaos free. The biggest thing is? I could lose all of it, and I *know* I would not only survive, I would thrive. That's what the past 2 years has given me.