Survival is my instinct

It's a new year and I've launched myself into the next steps for my son and I.

I am so grateful for all that aligned thus far and I am putting faith in what else will be on my path moving forward.

I've worked through the horrendous, painful months of abuse and power struggles. Though that does not mean it doest linger, simmer in a dark place that can rear its ugly head at any given moment.

And now I find myself in a strange place, navigating between allowing him to love me the way he maybe once did or still does and moving forward focused and relentlessly driven to forge a new path of success.

Today something took me by surprise, like a gut punch of a memory, and a flood of pain rushed in. Betrayal, vivd details I had once demanded to know, because my imagination could create far wilder pain than the reality of it all. Feeling the sheer selfishness of his behavior and my own anger in all that I have given. To him. To us. To our family.

It made me sad and want to cry over the injustice, the brutality I've endured and accepted as normal behavior.

Normal Love.

Normal for so long, normal that I've allowed others to treat me with an almost bare minimum standard of love. Me- choosing to still give and give and give.

It's so draining and can make me feel ill when I consider the 38+ years of programming and pain that left me to see this as my "normal".

Anger was always my cover. My go to emotion.

But anger = fear.

And when I would and have become enraged, well that is and always has been a deeper fear. A fear I wont receive any love unless I give all of myself, all of myself and then some.

I'm so tired of the anger, the fear and the exhaustion.

The false sense of control it gives and the energy it sucks out of me.

There will be a time in my life when these knee jerk reactions will be a distant memory of who I once was.

Because yet again I have come to a place of revelation and humility. A place where I see I'm meant to make a choice.

Turn a corner.

Today I am choosing to choke back that fear and anger and settle into a familiar friend called survival. Launching myself through. I have no space in my mind, body or spirit to pretend like I have control over the things that I don't.

My Trauma. The creation of my damaged programing that started when I was the smallest of girls, by the people who were meant to keep me safe from the world. And then the others after that this internal programing chose to keep as my company- "my friends, my loves".

A lifelong trauma has also created my drive, my survival. Surviving is instinct at this point in my life. A place of comfort where there is no room to think only do.

But fear? Anger? I've no energy left for these things.

At least not today.

And I pray not tomorrow.

Thriving awaits me

I choose me.

Now.

Brandi Nichole.                                                                1/31/25