Hanging On By A List

She wakes up exhausted, barely able to open her eyes.

For a brief moment, as she lies there in the stillness, she forgets the ache that has become her constant companion. But the second her feet touch the carpet, reality rushes back in. There is no easing into it. No turning back.

Her appetite is gone. The nausea returns like clockwork. Her nervous system reacts as if someone is about to set off dynamite beneath her feet, and her heart begins to race again.

She reaches for the list she made the night before. Somehow, it always seems longer in the morning.

It almost feels ridiculous that she has to write things like get out of bed, make the bed, pack gym bag, put shoes on, fill water bottle, put mascara on, be a present mom, make steps to grow the business. You would think a simple list would do. Gym. Meal prep. Computer work. Read. Even saying it that way feels lighter.

But she cannot trust her mind to carry her through general tasks. She needs a step-by-step guide because she is not moving through her days with a clear mind or a healed heart. She is hanging on by a thread, and that thread is a forty-step list designed to keep her from slipping beneath the surface again.

Brush teeth. Fix hair. Eat something if you can. Drink water, especially if you cant eat. Be patient. Be present. Be a present mom. Make steps to grow the business.

She moves through her life like a shell of a human being, finally sitting in the quiet after years of constant noise. For the first time, she is processing more than twenty years of pretending she was fine. Pretending words did not cut. Staying quiet. Choosing loud rooms because they were easier than listening to her own thoughts.

But now the room is not loud.

She has walked away from what was not good for her, and in the silence she can hear everything. Without the distractions, the pain arrives all at once. Every memory. Every good thing that ended badly. Every bad thing she denied. Every time she covered for someone. Every time she brushed off her own feelings.

Every time she blinks, she replays a memory. Every time she blinks, her heart winces, knowing she had to make the hard choice. And the hard choice left her to face more than just her demons.

It crashes into her body like something physical, like someone is reaching inside her chest and pulling her heart out with bare hands. Her pulse pounds as if she is about to free climb Mount Everest.

She seems to keep finding new kinds of pain she never knew existed.

She stands in front of the mirror. A single tear slides down her cheek. She wipes it away and looks back at the list.

Do the next thing.

She is beginning to see that she let people hurt her more than they ever knew. That she was already so wounded within herself that others simply became collateral damage in a story she had not yet faced. That in more ways than one, she had been shrinking herself just to keep the peace.

She follows the list exactly. By the end of the day, she has barely sat down. Her body aches for rest. Her mind whispers that she is falling short in her business, in her parenting, in her health. She cannot seem to win at all of it at once.

Her heart has little to say right now. It feels like a gaping hole, and it may remain that way for a while as she learns how to close it.

Time will heal. But patience in the quiet is brutal. Patience in the silence of days that used to be shared. Everything she does carries the weight of what once stood beside her.

She is grieving deeply. Yet she is still showing up.

Even if she is showing up like a robot, simply completing the next item on the list, that mechanical version of her is protecting something fragile. It is keeping her from being dragged back into the deep survival mode she once lived in.

I say “she” because it cannot be me forever. This cannot be the version of me that survives.

God’s got me. I trust in Him. So I plan to feel it all the way through, so I don't have to feel it forever.

Someday, she will be a memory. The woman strong enough to keep her head above water will fully emerge. And I will live to speak about that day.

Someday it will not hurt this much.

But that day is not today.

And for now, that is okay.

Thank you for being here,

Kaitlyn