When Survival Becomes the Strategy

I lost my house yesterday.

Not in the metaphorical way people talk about loss. Not in the “new chapter” or “letting go to grow” kind of way. I mean, it sold at an auction while I was still scrambling to save it. I was trying to get rid of one apartment to save the other. But time, and banks, don’t wait for logistics. So the place I fought for, the one I had dreams for, the one I wanted to keep… wasn’t the one I got to keep.

And you know what? That’s okay.

Not in a fake-it-til-you-make-it way. Not in a toxic positivity way. It’s okay because it has to be. That’s the thing about surviving. You just sort of do it and then you’re like, “Wait, I was waiting on that to happen and I was sure it would be the end, and it isn’t. How am I still going?”

And here’s the thingI do actually adore the one I’m keeping. It’s not second best. It’s just not the one I thought I was going to keep. That can’t be that big of a deal right? Maybe the universe knows something I don’t. Maybe the one I kept is even more aligned with the person I’ve become in the middle of all this loss and noise and fighting to hold onto things that were never really holding me back. It’s quieter. Calmer. And it feels like a place where something new can actually start.

When I look back to what happened, to being strangled, it always takes me super back to perspective because I am alive a whole year later, and now I get to move on from that. In that moment the only thing that was on my mind was my kid.

It’s weird, because I wasn’t scared of dying. I was scared of her losing her mom this young.

She’s the only thing that matters. Sorry, not sorry.

Survival, kind of ironically isn’t just about breathing, There’s way more to it. It’s about recognizing when someone who sat in a chair playing video games while I built an empire around him, is not entitled to me, or anything I am using to feel safe and protected right now.

Not when he is the reason I feel so unsafe.