I think about her sometimes. The girl I was before it happened. Before the anxiety unspooled like thread from my thoughts. Before the panic. Before the cracks in my memory. Before the grief rewired everything.
She knew how to tuck trauma away. As if it wasn’t waiting in the dark corners, growing and building, hiding just out of sight until one day it became too big to be contained and spilled out. And when it did, it broke everything.
People talk about healing like it’s a destination. Like if you do the right things and believe the right way, you’ll arrive at wholeness and move on.
But what no one tells you, not really, is that once your mind has shattered under the weight of it all, you don’t go back. You don’t return to the person you were before. And that’s a quiet kind of grief no one prepares you for.
There’s a version of me I sometimes miss. She was softer, more trusting, unaware of what the breaking would feel like. She could breathe without reminding herself to. She didn’t flinch at joy.
But I can’t go back for her. And maybe that’s okay.
Because though I’ve changed, though I walk with a limp in my thoughts and some days feel like I’m just holding my pieces together, I’m still here.
Still standing. Still healing.
Healing didn’t come in loud victories or mountain-moving faith. It came in walking two steps forward, one step back. In trying again and again. In slow mornings. In showing up when I didn’t feel like it. In sitting with Jesus when words failed. In crying on the floor. In whispering “help me” when that was all I had left.
And He never left.
He didn’t walk away from the mess of my mind. He stepped into it. He is not afraid of broken. He knows the way through it.
No one talks about the daily checking on your mental health. The quiet questions you ask yourself.
Am I okay?
Is this a spiral or just a bad day?
Will I ever feel normal again?
Some days you’re just afraid you could begin slipping again. And that’s fear for you. It tries to creep in at every turn. Sneaky and subtle. It doesn’t shout. It whispers. But even whispers can paralyze if you let them.
So I keep holding on. Not perfectly. Not even confidently most days. But I hold on to Jesus, because He is the only one who doesn’t flinch at my fear or grow tired of my questions.
I wish I could tell you there’s a clean ending to this story. That I woke up one day and felt like myself again. But that would be a lie. And I made a promise to tell the truth here.
Here’s the truth.
I’m still different. But I’m still loved.
And maybe, in some upside-down kind of way, even more whole than before. Because now I know what it’s like to meet God in the wilderness of my mind and find Him kind.
“I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,” declares the Lord, “because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares.”- Jeremiah 30:17
Maybe this isn’t your story. Maybe it belongs to someone close to you. Maybe you’ve never walked through mental collapse, but someone you love checks in on themselves every day just to keep from falling apart.
So be gentle. Be kind. Be aware. Because broken isn’t always visible. But it’s there.
And if you are the one who’s been broken, if you’re holding your breath hoping you won’t fall again, I want you to know this.
You are not weak. You are not failing. You are surviving something most people never even recognize.
And even if your faith feels like a flicker, God is not letting go.
You may never be the same. But maybe, just maybe, you are being made new.
- S Tomlinson
(Provided by "Little Sparrow Loved")