Year One

If you would have told me a year ago that I would be here today, I wouldn't have believed you.
Because a year ago today my world was shaken and I found it just a little bit harder to breathe. I was just a little bit broken.
Because there's no hiding from the truth when it looms before you on a prescription pad, glaring evidence of everything that went wrong.
I fought to get here. I was broken and, at one time or another, during those very dark first few months, I thought my situation was hopeless. I got angry, I cried and screamed and lost it and some days I didn't want to get out of bed.
There was overwhelming guilt, and the frustration and agony that comes with not understanding what is going on inside of your own body and being responsible for your own downfall. Those first few months were agonizing. I spent days and weeks and months trying to define for myself what this new life would look like, because I didn't know how to live anymore. I had to find, and speak, my truth, and I had to learn how to be authentic in a world where everyone was telling me who to be and how to act and what I needed to do.
A year ago today I got the news that changed my life and my world caved in and I fell into the depths of it for a while. Some days I didn't want to live in the dark abyss my life had become.
5 long, trying, exhausting months later, in a church pew, I finally broke. I was buried in an avalanche of guilt and fear and exhaustion and sickness and pain and grief and I basically told God that if He wanted me to live, He better do something because I wasn't going to live like this.
And, obviously, not too long after that, my life began to change.
So I'm sitting here today, in a place I never thought I would be. I'm rising up from the ashes, like a phoenix.
And while some days are still unspeakably hard and my heart is still scarred, I made it through my first year.
On this anniversary day, I do think back to what could have been. It's hard not to think about what your life could have been like or should be like or...
But the what it's don't matter. All they do is make it impossible for me to heal.
So I'm looking back on the past year with gratitude, and maybe a bit of sadness for the girl who took so long to figure out that you get to choose what defines you, and that sometimes terrible things don't break you, but save you.