Internally Broken… Yet, I Breathe. Walk. Run.

Umpteen times I wanted to give up.

Not the “leaving this earth” give up, but the “I don’t give a shit anymore” kind. Time to guzzle vast amounts of booze and self-destruct by wasting my days away. Never to heal my wounds or work on self-awareness or acknowledge the fact that I was living a helpless life by tearing myself down before giving myself a chance to flourish.

However, there is something deep in my soul that never allowed me to fully deteriorate and become permanently “useless” and only one answer make sense—God. He was there long before I had a relationship with Him and He will always be the One holding me together, strengthening me so I never fully break apart.

Now that I am at the halfway point of my expiration date in this tempestuous journey called life, I can say that nothing surprises me anymore. I have been dragged through the depths of despair, tangoed with chaos and stared at the ceiling from rock bottom’s basement, wondering how the hell I was still breathing.

Well… almost nothing.

Although I have had a rocky childhood, someone out there still had—and has—it worse off than me. A nudge to try and stay thankful for what I have while I previously kept my foot hard-pressed down on survival mode—both fight and flight.

I lived my life by disappearing in plain sight. I hid the pain-I-felt-inside behind laughter, rebellion and pretending everything was fine and dandy as I walked straight toward destruction—just to feel something real.

And just as I was building my life back up, I was shattered—obliterated during a time where I was minding my own business and writing my memoir “Random Thoughts & F*cked Up Answers.”

Let us skip over the horrifying, unconscionable details and get straight to the nitty-gritty of my message: addressing mental breakdowns and removing the stigma from them.

This is one of those topics that I am confident people will not outright say they have been there, done that. It is a messy, scary and wild place to be mentally. Sadly, it is also highly judged and looked down upon.

Although it has been almost two years since I experienced that low-of-lows, it still breaks my heart—the thoughts I had and where my mind went.

Temporary mental breakdowns don’t come with a warning label or a neat little timeline. They creep in like fog—slow, silent, then suddenly everywhere. A point where suffering in silence is no longer an option because the barriers in your mind have vanished without a trace.

I used to think breaking down meant failure. Especially since we are told that this kind of mental collapse is a weakness—that something is wrong with us and that we should expect it to happen again.

A character flaw. A reason to be ashamed.

Now, I see it differently. I see it as life’s toolbox cracking open for the remodeling of everything we once knew—to be redefined.

A rupture of the mask I wore while trying to fit into a world that never saw the real me—because truthfully, I didn’t even know who that was. The breakdown forced me to stop running from myself and to start rebuilding from the raw, jagged truth of it all.

Then came the whispers about who were the root cause of the psychologically intolerable situation—that I need to reclaim my dignity.

In my opinion, some things can’t be forgiven and all hardships need to be accepted for what they were, in order for me to work towards healing and try to move forward in life.

Although the “Good Book” teaches forgiveness as a way to prevent hatred and vengeance—righteous justice will always be an option. In that sense, what Scripture calls forgiveness, aligns more closely with what I now understand as “acceptance.”

To me, acceptance means that there will be no revenge, now or in the future. If they ever cross my path one day, I will ignore them cordially. I will not go out of my way to hurt them, nor will I go out of my way to help them. Most importantly, I don’t believe I need to forgive them for the damaged they caused. Instead, I will work towards a place where I no longer have lingering feelings about them or the situathat causes me distress or disrupts my peace of mind.

There will be a time to let go and move on. Not because we have “healed perfectly,” but because we have outgrown the version of ourselves that needed to carry all that pain.

Then we can rise, carrying our scars with pride because we have become more enlightened through them. Although I am not there yet, I believe that when that time comes, I will know.

I hold firm to this:

When the chaos doesn’t make sense—when justice is tentatively pending, when healing feels slow or impossible—there is still purpose in the mess.

Even through faith, when we doubt, rage or cry ourselves empty, I believe He is still working.

And sometimes, He needs everything to fall apart—not to punish us, but to rebuild us as if we are becoming the “newborn” in our second chance.. or third… and fourth.

So, if you’re at the start, the middle or at the end of your breaking point, know this:

We are not failing. We’re unfolding into something greater than ever imagined in the first place.

Our comeback will become such a profound moment—so loud, so undeniable—that even the trauma we barely survived will shrink into the fine print of our lives—so faint, even a magnifying glass will struggle to decipher it.