Before Therapy, There Was Her

Her

There’s a steadiness in my life that has a name.

She’s been beside me for fourteen years — through every version of who I’ve been.

The frightened one. The angry one. The one who disappears into the fog of dissociation and the one who crawls his way back.

She’s seen them all. And she stayed.

When the world tilts and I lose track of myself, she’s the thing that doesn’t move.

Her voice. Her laugh. The way she says my name like it’s a place I can return to.

That’s what grounds me.

Not safety, exactly — but something deeper.

A love that’s weathered enough storms to know that even when the current pulls, we’ll find our way back to shore.

The Weight of the Days

It’s not new for me — this feeling of heaviness.

It’s been a lifelong battle, one that’s shaped the rhythm of my days.

There are stretches where all I can manage is showing up to work, coming home, and repeating the cycle.

The rest of life feels far away, like I’m watching it through glass.

There are days when hope feels like a foreign language,

when I look around and can’t see a version of me that fits in this world.

I feel misunderstood. Unseen. Unloved — except for her.

And yet, sometimes it gets so bad that even her love fades from view.

It’s still there — I know it’s still there — but my mind can’t seem to reach it.

It’s like the light is blocked, and I can only feel the shadow of something I know used to warm me.

But she never disappears.

Even when compassion doesn’t come easily between us, she remains.

We’ve never been perfect — we don’t pretend to be —

but what we do have is a commitment to keep showing up, to keep trying,

to keep finding ways back to one another.

Growing in Circles

Fourteen years sounds like permanence, but it’s not a straight line.

We’ve grown — sometimes together, sometimes apart.

We hold up the mirror for each other,

not to chase perfection, but to say,

Hey, this hurts people around you. Let’s do better.

That’s the work we share — the kind that’s rooted in care for more than just ourselves.

Because underneath it all, we both deeply care about humanity.

We want to love in ways that make the world around us softer.

And maybe that’s what keeps us together —

the shared belief that growth matters, that empathy matters, that people can change.

The Woman Who Changed Everything

Before therapy, before I ever had words like “trauma” or “healing,”

there was her.

She’s the person who helped me unwind the learned behaviors I carried from childhood —

the ones that taught me love had to be earned, that silence was safety,

that I had to shrink to survive.

She showed me a different way to exist in the world.

She told me why those patterns weren’t okay and how I could start showing up differently.

All of it began with her — long before I ever sat across from a therapist.

She singlehandedly helped me change the course of my life.

The gratitude I feel for her, the admiration I hold — it’s forever there.

My wife is the kind of woman who leaves love in every room she enters.

She’s easy to love. She’s filled with fire and life and she cares deeply about the people around her.

And I feel honored — truly honored — to be part of her life.

Finding My Way Back

My headspace changes constantly.

Some days I know who I am; other days I feel like a stranger living inside myself.

There are moments when I lose my footing so completely

that all I want is to disappear — to crawl into the biggest hole I can find

and let the world move on without me.

But she never lets me stay gone for long.

She helps me reorient.

She reminds me of what I value, of what I believe in,

of the parts of me that still exist beneath the fog.

When I forget who I am, she helps me remember.

She’s the compass that points me back to myself.

The Momentum

A lot of days, it’s her that keeps me moving forward.

Not pressure — just presence.

The thought of her waiting for me at the end of a long day,

the softness in her voice even when we’re tired of trying.

When I lose my momentum for myself, I borrow hers.

I want that kind of drive for me someday — to want healing because I believe I’m worth it.

And sometimes I do. Sometimes it flickers to life, and I can feel that possibility just beneath my ribs.

But on the harder days, it’s love that moves me first.

The wanting to be better for her becomes the doorway to wanting to be better for me.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

Maybe that’s how healing starts —

with the desire to be someone who can love as deeply as they are loved.

Author’s Note

This piece is about partnership — the kind that holds through imperfection and distance,

that challenges and softens, that grows because both people keep trying.

It’s a reflection on love as an anchor — not because it’s always gentle,

but because it stays, it teaches, and it asks us to keep returning to the work of being human.

For me, that anchor is my wife — the one who’s stayed, grown, and kept believing there’s still something worth coming home to.