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There’s a pattern to my lowest moments, but I didn’t notice it until recently.

A couple of weekends ago, I was bed-rotting — truly committing to the craft — wrapped in blankets, doing that thing where you try to disappear into a mattress because life feels too loud. I needed a comfort show, something familiar enough that my brain could go quiet.

Last time things were really bad, it was a full Sex and the City rewatch — because that one is a bender. Before that, it was Lipstick Jungle. Then Younger. And so naturally my next go this time was The Bold Type. We won’t talk about how many times I’ve watched each of these series; I don’t need the hours added up on paper, lol.

About 36 hours after I finished the series finale — after three nights of staying up way too late on work nights and two full days of bed-rot energy — at exactly 9:30 p.m., the realization finally cracked through.

Why are all my comfort shows about writing?

Why is it always editors, columnists, authors, people turning their lives into stories?

Why is it never cooking shows or fantasy worlds or sitcoms?

And don’t worry — these are just my comfort shows. I am a proud Real Housewives, 90-Day Fiancé, and various-other-streaming-series girl. But when it comes to my emotional support rewatches, it’s always the ones about writing.

And then my brain answered me, very matter-of-factly:

Girl, it’s about damn time! Of course they are because this is who you’ve always been.

I don’t even remember how old I was when I started saying I’d write a book someday. I just know it was early — early enough that it lived in me before I had words for why. And I think it’s been sitting there the whole time, tapping its foot, waiting for me to catch up.

So now, when I’m at my lowest, when I’m flailing or unraveling or trying to rebuild myself again, what do I do?

I turn on shows about the life I feel I’m meant to be living.

It feels almost spiritual — like my brain or my intuition or my spirit guides are trying to get a message through my thick skull:

You need to be writing.

You have to chase the dream.

You owe it to the little girl who said she would.

Because God knows I haven’t always given myself what I said I would.

There have been so many moments where I gag the truth in my throat, where the words pile up behind my teeth like they’re begging to be released, and instead I swallow them whole. And they burn. Every time.

And maybe the real truth isn’t that I’ve ignored this for decades — it’s that the noise and chaos around me were too loud for too long. Life was too heavy. Everything was survival. And only now, as things have quieted, can I finally see the beautiful parts of me for what they are again: beautiful, powerful, mine. My brain is always narrating. Always reporting. Always storytelling. It has never once shut up. I walk into a room, and there’s a monologue. I sit in my car, and there’s an introduction to three different articles in my head before I get home for the day. I go to bed, and there’s a plot twist. Honestly, I’ve been like this since my earliest memories of myself. I can sit and talk to myself for hours — not a conversation between two people, just me saying everything out loud instead of letting it pile up in my head. Talking out loud has always been a release for me. It’s exhausting to carry all of that internally, but when I take that nonstop narration and turn it into something creative, something purposeful, it finally feels like peace.

And honestly, it’s not like I haven’t tried before. I started a blog once in my teens, back when the internet still felt like a quiet neighborhood instead of a stadium. And with my brain, it’s pretty typical for things to flop. Poor Facebook probably has me flagged like, “Ope, this girl just started another business page — wonder how quickly this will burn out.” But the world was different then, and I was different. I hadn’t done the work yet. It took almost four years of therapy — and thirty-five years of people-pleasing — to finally understand I’m allowed to say things even if they don’t please anyone but me.

And somewhere in that process, I realized I don’t have to keep all these thoughts trapped in my head anymore. I can pull them out and place them in the Pensieve — with intention — and let them go. Not as a grand finale, not as some polished masterpiece, just as a release. Let them land where they’re meant to land.

But something shifted this time.

Something finally sank in. The goal doesn’t have to be a book. The goal is to write and go where the thought takes you.

And yes, you might be thinking: girl, you could just journal.

But here’s the thing: I can’t.

My brain doesn’t work like that.

I can’t write something important and saturated with every ounce of my soul, dripping with meaning and escape – and then close the notebook and tuck it away. There’s a fire in me that only dies down once I’ve shared it. A sentence isn’t complete until it’s released into the wild, where maybe, just maybe, one person who needs it will stumble across it and suddenly feel a little less alone.

That’s what I want to write.

The things that my brain rewires.

The things I observe without trying.

The internal narrator that won’t shut up when I’m riding an elevator or walking into a room with weird energy.

The moments where life feels absurd or painful or confusing or quietly hilarious.

Like, why do I feel like I have to go to the downstairs bathroom at work to hide and poop? I can publish essays that feel really vulnerable on the internet but I cannot let Jane in accounting hear me drop a deuce.

Why is it so embarrassing when literally every human alive does it?

Why do women instinctively try to pretend we’re not biological creatures?

These are the stories my brain grabs onto.

The ones that feel stupid until they aren’t.

The ones that start as nothing and end up meaning something.

So this is me, finally listening.

Finally giving myself the thing I’ve promised since childhood.

I’m writing.

Not because I should.

Not because it’s productive.

But because something in me refuses to shut up until I do.

Mostly because I didn’t know how to explain something I didn’t completely understand myself.

I just knew I needed the mountain.

I needed to do something hard. Something that required me to shut everything else out and put one foot in front of the other. Something big enough that maybe, for a little while, my brain wouldn’t have room for anything except the next step in front of me.

So I picked a backpacking trip.

Because apparently therapy wasn’t dramatic enough.

About 15 miles. Roughly 3,000 feet of elevation. Two nights in the backcountry. Ypsilon the first night, Lawn Lake the second, and then 6.3 miles back down and out.

I did my Wild hike.

And somewhere in those 15 miles, I realized I was fucking exhausted.

Not hiking exhausted.

Life exhausted.

For the last few years, I have been incredibly quiet about some of the hardest parts of my life.

Which is funny, because quiet is not a word most people would use to describe me.

I am loud.

I am dramatic.

I am bossy.

I am emotional. Opinionated. Impulsive. Excitable.

I have big ideas and big feelings. I dream big. I love big. Sometimes I react big.

I have a lot of muchness.

But I have spent my life learning how to contain it.

The Things I Don’t Talk About

I’ve shared pieces of my life.

I’ve made jokes.

I’ve talked about rebuilding. I’ve celebrated accomplishments. I’ve posted the happy pictures, the ridiculous moments, and the beautiful life I’ve somehow managed to build over the last few years.

But I have kept a lot of the ugly parts quiet. I’ve hidden them, scared of my own truth.

My last relationship was bad.

That’s probably the most plainly I’ve ever said that publicly.

There are stories underneath that sentence that I’m not going to tell right now. Some I will tell. Some I may tell someday. Some I may never tell.

Because telling the truth doesn’t mean I owe everyone the evidence.

But it was bad.

There were years that changed me in ways I’m still discovering.

There were things I survived that I don’t talk about. Things I lost. Things I grieved quietly. Futures I thought I would have disappeared. Moments that broke pieces of me and years spent figuring out how the hell to put those pieces back together.

And through all of it, I became really fucking good at questioning myself.

Maybe it wasn’t actually that bad.

Maybe I’m being dramatic.

Maybe I’m remembering it wrong.

Maybe I caused it.

Maybe I deserved that reaction.

Maybe if I hadn’t said that.

Maybe if I hadn’t done that.

Maybe if I were easier.

Quieter.

Less emotional.

Less demanding.

Less…

me.

So I stayed quiet.

And I carried it instead.

My Muchness

There’s this version of myself I carry around in my head everywhere I go.

She’s a bitch.

She’s selfish.

She’s bossy.

She’s dramatic.

She’s difficult.

She’s a disappointment.

She’s too much.

And holy shit, is she exhausting.

Because she gets to review damn near everything I do.

Did I hurt someone’s feelings?

Was I selfish?

Did I ask too much?

Did I make this about me?

Should I apologize?

Did I disappoint someone?

Was I too emotional?

Should I have just kept my mouth shut?

Even this fucking hike.

I signed the two of us up for something I knew I needed without really explaining to Lewis why I needed it.

And there she was.

That was selfish.

You dragged him into this.

You made this about you.

It’s not a healing journey if you aren’t alone.

It’s like I have spent years carrying the prosecution’s version of myself everywhere I go, constantly building a case against me.

And I am so fucking tired.

I’m tired of carrying my muchness as evidence that there’s something wrong with me.

Because here’s the other truth:

I am dramatic.

I am bossy.

I am emotional.

I am loud.

I have strong opinions.

I can be stubborn as hell.

Sometimes I am difficult.

Sometimes I fuck up.

Sometimes I make the wrong choice.

Sometimes I disappoint people.

Sometimes I choose myself.

There are absolutely moments when I need to apologize, learn something, shut the fuck up, and do better.

But none of that means I need to spend my entire life apologizing for existing exactly as I am.

Maybe my muchness was never the thing I needed to get rid of.

Maybe it was the shame I learned to carry around it.

And Then My Body Was Done

The last mile down that mountain, I cried.

Not one beautiful cinematic tear rolling down my cheek while I gazed thoughtfully into the Rockies.

I mean, I cried.

Every fucking step.

About a mile earlier, I’d fallen and taken a boulder to my knee.

Adrenaline is a hell of a thing because for a while, I just kept going.

Until my body realized we were safe enough to hurt.

Then everything started catching up.

My knees hurt.

My feet hurt.

My body was exhausted.

My shoulders were screaming.

My brain was done.

There was no inspirational hiking quote running through my head.

I was fucking pissed.

I wanted to blame everyone.

I wanted someone else to be responsible for how badly this sucked.

And then the answer came:

I chose this. My inner monologue was actually more like, “Bitch, who are you blaming? This ain’t nobody else's fault but your own. Y.O.U.”

And immediately my brain knew what to do with those words.

See?

You did this.

Your fault.

It was the same voice.

The same fucking voice I’ve heard for years. My own personal AI voice, generated from everything ever said or done to me, and everything I observed around me. I had created a version of myself that hated me more than anyone else ever could.

And somewhere in that miserable final mile, the words changed, and I stood up to the hate because on this journey I was too stubborn to admit defeat.

Wait.

I chose this.

I chose to come here.

I chose to climb this mountain.

I chose to keep going.

I chose to stand back up after I fell.

I chose the next step.

And then the next one.

And if I chose this…

I get to choose what happens next, too.

She Got Me Out

I’ve spent a lot of years being angry at my body.

I’ve abused her through emotional struggles.

I’ve neglected her.

I’ve punished her.

I’ve hated pieces of her.

I’ve looked in mirrors and picked her apart.

I’ve blamed her for not looking the way I think she should.

And through every single bit of it, I’ve expected her to just keep fucking going.

And she has.

That day on the mountain, when my brain had absolutely nothing left to offer, my body kept moving.

One foot.

Then the other.

Again.

Again.

Again.

She got me out.

She carried me through roughly 15 miles in the Rocky Mountains.

She climbed thousands of feet.

She carried a 30-pound, not-the-right-fit pack the entire way.

She slept on the ground.

She climbed over rocks.

She fell.

She was hurt.

She stood back up.

And then she carried me down that mountain.

This body I have spent so much time fighting and abusing refused to quit on me.

And I suddenly realized how incredibly unfair that relationship has been.

She has taken care of me for 36 years.

Maybe it’s my fucking turn.

My body.

My soul.

My brain.

My energy.

My circle.

I don’t want to beat any of them into submission anymore.

I want to take care of them.

He Was Around the Corner

And even in a moment that needed to be completely about me, I wasn’t actually alone.

That last mile, Lewis stayed ahead of me.

Just far enough.

He would disappear around a corner and give me the space I’d asked for. I won’t pretend I was gracious when I asked, either.

But that’s what I needed.

I didn’t need someone telling me I could do it.

I didn’t need someone trying to fix it.

I didn’t need to be rescued.

I needed to get myself down that fucking mountain, alone. I also knew that if he stood in my kill zone, I would have a harder battle fighting my initial urge for my tongue to rage against someone, anyone other than myself.

So he let me.

But every once in a while, through my tears, I’d catch him.

Just a glimpse.

Around the next corner.

Waiting.

He didn’t want me to notice.

But I did.

And honestly, it just made me cry harder.

Because somehow this man understands something I am still learning:

He can give me space without leaving me alone.

He lets me fight my own battles without making me fight for his presence, too.

There is seemingly nothing I can say or do that makes this man finally throw his hands up, say fuck you, figure it out yourself, and leave me to handle everything alone anyway.

And trust me.

I’ve given him opportunities. A relationship with a woman healing from trauma with diagnosed PTSD is not for the faint of heart, and I am definitely not always a walk in the park when I work through my demons.

And I am still all of those things I always have been:

Dramatic.

Bossy.

Emotional.

Stubborn.

A whole fucking lot.

He doesn’t always agree with me. He doesn’t always understand me. I’m sure there are moments when loving my muchness is really fucking hard.

But somehow he gives me room to be every bit of myself without making me afraid that the price of being myself will be losing him.

He doesn’t save me.

He doesn’t contain me.

He just stays around the corner.

And maybe that’s part of why seeing him there broke me open.

Because I am finally learning the difference between being given space and being abandoned.

I am also learning that I don’t have to hide my most authentic, vulnerable self to be loved exactly as I deserve.

And Then There Was the Picture

Later, I saw the picture Lewis took of me at Lawn Lake.

And I was pissed.

It was basically the only picture he took of me there.

And that’s the one?

I’m wearing shorts.

It’s from behind.

My legs are completely visible.

I don’t look thin.

I don’t look like some magically transformed, badass outdoors woman posing triumphantly on top of a mountain.

I look like me.

And my eyes immediately went to my legs.

Those fucking legs I hate.

I know every part of them I wish were different.

I know exactly how I would have posed if I’d known the picture was being taken.

I know how I would have tried to make myself look smaller.

And then I looked at the picture again.

Those legs were standing at Lawn fucking Lake.

I almost looked at a photograph of something absolutely incredible and reduced the woman standing in it to the size of her thighs.

Again.

Except this time I caught myself.

Because those legs I hate?

Those legs carried me there.

Those legs climbed thousands of feet into the Rocky Mountains.

Those legs carried my pack.

They stepped over rocks and roots.

They hauled my ass all the way to that lake.

They took a hit from a boulder.

They hurt like hell.

And when I asked them for another mile?

They fucking did it.

Those legs carried me back out.

Maybe I’m not ready to look at every part of my body and think it’s beautiful.

Maybe I don’t have to.

But I can look at that picture now and think:

Look where she fucking took me.

And for right now, that’s enough.

I’m Leaving It Here

I’ve built a beautiful life over the last few years.

It has also been messy as hell.

I’ve experienced joy I wasn’t sure I’d ever have again and grief for things I thought my life would contain by now.

I’ve rebuilt while still hurting.

I’ve loved while still learning how to trust.

I’ve been a mother, a partner, a professional, a friend, and every other version of myself while privately trying to figure out who the fuck I am underneath all of it.

There have been moments that brought me to the absolute edge of what I thought I was mentally capable of moving through.

But I moved through them.

Just like that last mile.

And I think I’m finally ready to say:

It was hard.

Some of it was really fucking bad.

It changed me.

It affected me.

There are stories behind those words.

I don’t need to tell all of them.

I don’t need to prove what happened.

I don’t need anyone’s permission to call my experiences what they were.

And I don’t need to keep carrying them just because I haven’t explained them to everyone else.

I’ve spent enough time fighting the past.

I’ve spent enough time fighting myself.

I’ve spent enough time trying to predict and control every possible future, so maybe nothing can ever hurt that badly again.

I’ve spent enough time wondering if I’m too much.

I’m done.

Not healed.

Not magically fixed.

Not suddenly fearless.

Done carrying it.

I’m not leaving my muchness on that mountain.

I’m bringing every fucking bit of her home.

The dramatic one.

The bossy one.

The emotional one.

The loud one.

The woman with huge ideas and huge feelings who signs herself up to climb a fucking mountain because some part of her knows she needs it before she can even explain why.

She gets to come with me.

I’m leaving the shame.

I’m leaving the constant trial happening inside my head.

I’m leaving the belief that I need to become smaller to deserve love.

I’m leaving the idea that every hard thing that has happened to me has to become something I carry forever.

And I’m leaving behind the belief that this body is something I need to hate into becoming worthy.

Because she got me here.

All of her got me here.

And now it’s my turn to take care of the woman who carried me this far.

I don’t know exactly what life is going to look like from here.

For once, I don’t fucking need to.

Whatever is supposed to come next can come.

I’m going to live.

I’m going to take up space.

I’m going to fuck up sometimes.

I’m going to be too much for some people.

I’m going to love people fiercely.

I’m going to choose myself sometimes.

I’m going to keep becoming whoever the hell I am supposed to become.

And when my brain inevitably starts asking whether I’m too loud, too emotional, too selfish, too bossy, too difficult, too much—

I hope I remember that picture.

My back to the camera.

Mountains in front of me.

Those legs underneath me.

Standing at Lawn Lake.

Those legs I hate carried me there.

And to the life I’ve dreamed of—

I am so fucking ready to step out and chase you. 🏔️🍀