Learning to Live Again
For a long time, I wasn’t living. I was merely surviving. I don’t mean the kind of “survival mode” people mention casually when they’ve skipped breakfast or had a busy week. I mean the bone-deep kind. The kind where every day is an act of endurance. Where your nervous system never lets you exhale deeply. Where even the good moments pass by in a foggy haze because your body is too busy preparing for the next blow.
I lost myself there, and I stayed for longer than I should.
When I was pregnant with my son, I was working up until the very end, I remember driving along the long, grey A-road to a depot on an industrial estate, shuffling in with swollen ankles, high-vis and safety boots, climbing up steep steps to get to a canteen to eat the same meal everyday (jacket potato, beans and cheese in case you are interested) whilst having sciatica! I was sick every single day, often on my lap on the drive home. I was exhausted in every sense. I was growing life while trying to survive my own. When I’d come home, I’d collapse in the bath, sobbing silently, scared and alone despite never being alone.
My sons father at the time didn’t work. His love for me existed as long as I was doing what he wanted me to do. He’d let me baby him while I carried everything, including our child, our life, our future hopes, and dreams. I’d drive hours to take him fishing on weekends, pretending it was a break for me, too. Pretending I wasn’t drowning in resentment and unspoken grief.
I started maternity leave on a Friday. My son arrived that Monday, 37 weeks and 5 days, like even he knew I couldn’t keep carrying it all, and yet still, I did.
I carried us all through the early days, weeks, months, and years. I made the memories. I held the weight. I orchestrated the family life I so desperately wanted, placing my sons father in the right scenes, giving him the script, making sure he had no room to fail because if he failed, it all would’ve come crashing down.
So I didn’t let him fail it wasn’t an option. I made him a great father by being everything else. No matter what I was sacrificing, whether that was my sanity, happiness, or health, I gave it all. I look back now, and strangely, I don’t feel regret. For a while, it felt like magic.
That said, memory is a strange thing. I remember the logistics. I remember the places we went, but I don’t remember how it felt because I never got to feel it. I have the glossy pictures, but the memories I have don’t match. I was too busy holding it all.
Fast forward to now, two years after leaving, after choosing myself, after stepping away from the shell of a family I tried to build with trembling hands and I’m only just learning how to breathe again.
I’m not in full bloom yet, but the blossom has begun nonetheless.
I flinch a little less when I hear loud voices.
I don’t cry every time I hear an argument. I no longer jump at every motorbike that speeds down my road, convinced it’s him.
Some days are soft, some are jagged but all are mine. I spent so long surviving that the simple act of being still, of feeling safe feels foreign, and I’m not sure when it will feel safe again. I don’t quite recognise myself in the mirror yet. I don’t always know what I like, what I need, who I am when I’m not reacting to someone else’s chaos. Though I’m getting there, and I will get there eventually, or I’ll die trying.
Some days, I play hide and seek with my son in the house, and I’m there, not dissociating but physically and mentally present, not scanning for danger. There. Some nights, I sleep without waking in a sweat. Some mornings, I look in the mirror and say, “she’s coming back.” And that’s enough for now.
So if you’re in that place, deep in the wilderness of survival, I want to tell you something:
It doesn’t last forever.
You don’t have to live in fight-or-flight for the rest of your life.
You don’t have to keep proving your worth by how much you can endure.
There’s more for you than just making it through the day.
One day, your body will soften again, and you’ll be able to relax your shoulders.
Your heart will open, not from fear, but from peace.
You’ll remember what it feels like to feel without waiting for pain.
And when you do, you’ll realise something so powerful and precious:
You deserve to feel better in yourself.
Not because you’ve survived, but because you are alive.
That’s a beautiful thing to become.
Hi, I'm Emilia Isabelle 
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