What survival taught me, and what it cost.
For a long time, the hardest thing for me was not discipline or motivation.
It was care.
I could push.
I could endure.
I could function.
But tending to myself felt heavy. Almost inappropriate.
Consistency with my body carried a charge I could not name.
Looking after myself did not land as relief. It landed as resistance.
From the outside, it looked like self-sabotage.
From the inside, it was something else entirely.
The Body Was Never Neutral
My body was never neutral ground.
It was where violation happened.
Where innocence was interrupted.
Where fear entered before language had a chance to form.
Once a place is marked like that, you do not linger there.
You do not soften.
You do not move slowly.
You leave.
Leaving Kept Me Alive
I left through numbing.
I left through control.
I left through distance.
I did not abandon my body because I hated it.
I abandoned it because returning meant proximity.
Proximity to memory.
Proximity to sensation.
Proximity to something my nervous system was never taught how to hold.
Addiction helped me leave.
Disconnection helped me leave.
Competence helped me leave.
They worked.
Until they did not.
When Survival Stops Working
There is a moment when the strategies that once kept you alive go quiet.
They do not collapse dramatically.
They do not announce their failure.
They simply stop taking you anywhere.
And you are left standing exactly where you have been avoiding.
That was when the penny dropped.
Naming the Truth
My body was never the site of my failure.
It was the site of the crime.
That distinction matters.
Failure invites correction.
Crime demands acknowledgement.
Acknowledgement changes what comes next.
The Site of Return
This is not a chapter about fixing myself.
It is not about forcing health or performing resilience.
It is about reclamation.
About teaching my body, slowly, that I am no longer leaving it behind.
That care is not punishment.
That strength does not require violence.
That presence is no longer dangerous.
What Care Means Now
Fitness is not a goal.
Nourishment is not self-improvement.
Rest is not indulgence.
They are acts of repair.
Acts of loyalty.
Acts of staying.
Not dramatic.
Not aesthetic.
Just consistent.
Staying
I am done running.
I am done dissociating.
I am done treating survival strategies like character flaws.
They were intelligent.
They were necessary.
They kept me alive.
And now, I am choosing to stay.
Not to erase what happened.
Not to redeem the past.
But to live from this body anyway.
