SpravatoSavedMe

You broke me down in more ways than I can count.
And still, somehow, I rose.
Not because of you—but in spite of you.

You say you want me to see my worth, my strength, my beauty.
But you never taught me how.
You only ever taught me how to question myself, how to shrink, how to hurt.
You gave me shame when I needed love.
Silence when I needed protection.
Judgment when I needed grace.

And now, when I’ve fought like hell to find the pieces of myself you tried to erase,
you want to stand at a safe distance and pretend you had a hand in it?

No.
You don’t get to claim the woman I became.
The credit for her healing belongs to her—and only her.

You said I was strong,
but only after watching me break—
after you subconsciously broke and battered every ounce of me.
You didn’t build my resilience;
you forced it into existence.
And then you had the nerve to admire the strength you never nurtured,
as if you had any part in creating it.

You forced your choices to become my reality—
not because they were right,
but because you lacked even a drop of faith in me,
in who I could’ve been,
in the greatness I was born to rise into.

If I’ve made it this far—without being nurtured,
without being encouraged,
without being seen or believed in—
just imagine the reckoning I was meant to be
if I’d ever had consistent parenting.
If I’d ever been lifted instead of dismissed.
If love had been a language I learned, not a wound I had to heal from.

But I am that reckoning anyway.
Because today, I am my own consistency.
Not because I wanted to be—
but because I had no other choice.

When the world went quiet,
when your voice was the only one I had and it told me I was too much or not enough,
I still found a way to survive.
In the darkest of my days,
I scraped and clawed through the wreckage,
just to let in the tiniest slivers of light.

And from those scraps—I built a life.

You said one thing true, months ago:
God gave me the answer.
Even if it wasn’t the one I was praying for.
Even if it came wrapped in grief instead of grace.
But you missed the deeper truth.

You want to dismiss him as just another man in my life,
like all the others you judged without knowing,
as if his presence somehow discredits my growth.
But that man—
even in his flaws,
even in the ways he hurt me—
saw me.

In the first few days we met,
he saw more goodness, more light, more possibility in me
than you’ve seen in 52 years.

And that will always be the difference.
He may have left.
But you were never really there to begin with.

I am forever changed by what his presence brought into my life.
Self-respect.
Slow-building confidence.
A quiet courage I didn’t even know I had.
He didn’t just see me—he accepted me, flaws and all.
He wiped away my fears by simply standing in my corner.
He never tried to fix me.
He was never ashamed or embarrassed of who I was.
And no, he was never my boyfriend—
but the love he gave me was pure, unconditional, and safe.
And I’ve never received anything like that from you.

You don’t get to guilt me.
You don’t get to dangle your love like a threat,
or remind me of what evil you’re capable of if I defy you.
Because the truth is—
even when I followed all your rules,
even when I did everything to earn your approval—
it was still never good enough.

You’ve always looked for what’s wrong with me.
You’ve inherently believed the worst.

So I’m done.
I’m freeing myself from seeking your validation going forward.
Because now, for the first time,
I see the woman I am.

And I know exactly who got her here:
Me.

Not you.
Not your words.
Not your love withheld.

Me.

The woman I’ve become—she was born from truth,
raised in resilience,
and shaped by grace you never offered.

And every day now, I strive to be the best version of myself—
the exact opposite of you.

You have rewritten the past,
leaving out crucial details to paint yourself as the victim—
never taking a damn ounce of accountability for your choices.
But this undoing?
This is your reckoning.
This is the reminder that eventually,
your actions will catch up with you.

I have cut you too much slack as it is.
You've burned the last remaining pieces
of the bridges I rebuilt for the sake of keeping the peace.

You no longer have access to the basics of my life.
You are now simply someone I tolerate on holidays—
and even that is a fragile mercy.
Because you destroyed my peace for so long.

Now, it’s my turn
to do whatever is necessary to protect it.

You want me to believe your card was love?
That your words hold weight?
But words on paper mean nothing
when they don’t come from the heart. #MightyTogether #SpravatoSavedMe
#MentalHealth
#BipolarDepression
#ThisPainHasPurpose
#strongerthanmystorm #EndTheStigma
#recoveryfrominconsistentparenting
#breakinggenerationaltrauma
#imnotafraidanymore
#finallyfoundmyvoice

The Switch Flipped
by Jenn Dacey

Intro:
This is the exact moment I stopped shrinking myself to fit into places I had outgrown.

Don’t push a good person to the point where they no longer give a fuck.
Because once the switch flips, it’s over.
The softness doesn’t disappear—
it just stops being available to people who took it for granted.
The love doesn’t die—
it just stops being handed out like a goddamn reward for bad behavior.

I was the good person.
The one who stayed too long.
Loved too hard.
Apologized too quickly.
Forgave too easily.

I gave benefit of the doubt like it was oxygen.
I extended grace even when I was gasping.
I showed up for people who forgot me the moment their storms passed.
And every time, I told myself, “That’s just who I am.”

But now?

The switch flipped.

I don’t chase.
I don’t beg.
I don’t overexplain.
If you fumble me, you lose me.
No second act. No soft return. No “maybe they’ll change.”

I’ve changed.

That’s what no one expected.
That I would rise—not bitter, but brutal.
Not angry, but awake.
Not heartless, but healed.

You can’t guilt me into going back.
You can’t charm me into forgetting.
I’m not waiting for closure anymore—I am the closure.

The girl who used to cry for love is gone.
She’s resting now.
She did her job.
She kept me alive.

But I’m driving now.
And I don’t take passengers who can’t handle the weight of my worth.

If you wanted me,
you should’ve shown up for me.
When I cried,
when I begged,
when I whispered “I need you” with every ounce of strength I had left—
that was your moment.

But you let it pass.
You watched me unravel,
and stayed silent.
You mistook my patience for weakness,
my forgiveness for permission.

You thought I’d always be there.
But now?

The door’s locked.
The key?
It was made of things you don’t carry:
accountability.
honesty.
effort.
respect.

I don’t owe anyone my undoing ever again.

You don’t get to miss me now that I’m unavailable.
You don’t get to regret what you lost
when you never fought to keep it.

I’m not ice cold.
I’m just done melting for people
who only liked me when I was easy to pour into a glass.

I loved you.
I wanted it to work.
I dreamed of being enough.

But now I realize—
you weren’t even enough for you.

And I’m not staying small to make you feel big.

I have finally, finally arrived
in the space where my peace matters more than your presence.

So if you’re wondering what happened,
if you’re scrolling through our old messages looking for cracks—
here’s your answer:

The switch flipped.

And I’ll never be that soft again
for someone who made me feel like I was hard to love.

#theswitchflipped #traumahealing
#MentalHealthAwareness #Selfworth #BipolarDepression #Suicide #Grief #FromDarknessToLight
#keepgoing
#WhenNothingElseWorked
#SpravatoHope
#strongerthanmystorm
#writingtoheal
#SpravatoSavedMe

🧺 The Basket of Markers: A Post-Spravato Revelation

Tonight, I got high.
Not just “I’m giggly and everything feels soft” high — I mean clarity high. The kind that creeps up when you’re just living your weird little life, surrounded by your weird little things, and suddenly boom — therapy-level insight smacks you in the face with a Sharpie.

You see, I’m kind of a hoarder. Not the kind they make TV shows about (yet), but close.
Especially when it comes to stuff that makes me happy. Craft supplies. Journaling pens. Markers. Planners. If it comes in all the colors, I want all the colors. And not just want — I obsess. I organize. I keep things forever because I swear to myself, I’m gonna get back into that someday.

I don’t just have one planner.
I have five.
Each has a purpose, a location, and they’re all synced up like the Pentagon of personal organization. That’s how I work. That’s how my brain has always tried to create control out of chaos.

And then there’s my marker collection. We’re talking gel tips, fine points, Sharpies, off-brand craft store specials, and yes — I recently bought a 262-color mega pack because apparently, I like to own coloring even though I do it maybe three times a year.

But here’s the thing.

Tonight, I bought a new basket.
A Longaberger — because yeah, I collect those too.

And instead of separating every marker by brand, as I’ve always done, I put them all together.

Still color-coded (duh — I’m not a monster).
But for the first time, not by brand.

All mixed up.
All in one basket.

And in that quiet little moment, I realized:

This basket is me now.

Before, everything in my life was separated:
🖤 Before trauma / after trauma
🖤 Before the pain / after the breakdown
🖤 Before Owen died / after the world collapsed

I kept it all compartmentalized — like trauma Tupperware. Neatly labeled. Sealed shut. Keep the mess contained.

But since starting Spravato, something shifted.
My thoughts are no longer all-or-nothing.
My identity isn’t black-and-white.
And my healing doesn’t need labels.

Just like those markers, I can exist in the same basket.

The grief.
The growth.
The obsession.
The creativity.
The sadness.
The sparkle.

It all goes together now.

So maybe I’m still a little OCD, and maybe I’ll still color-code by rainbow arc because I like pretty things. But I’m not organizing by trauma anymore.

I’m organizing by joy.
By who I am now.
By what makes sense in this moment.

And that’s not crazy.
That’s recovery.

So yeah, maybe it’s just a stoned night with a bunch of markers and a woven basket…
Or maybe it’s Sigmund Freud meets radical self-love, with a gel pen in hand and a giggle in my throat.

Either way, I’m keeping the damn basket.
And I’m keeping all of me in it.

⸻

By Jenn
🌈 Color-coder of chaos. Hoarder of hope. Marker-wielding warrior.
#postspravatolife #healingoutloud #ocdbutmakeitart

#postspravatolife
#Stillhere
#healingjourney
#EndTheStigma #youarenotalone #FromDarknessToLight
#WhenNothingElseWorked
#GriefIsLoveWithNowhereTo #GriefIsLoveWithNowhereToGo #mentalhealthmatters #SpravatoSavedMe #writingtoheal #strongerthanmystorm #SpravatoHope #healingjourney #EndTheStigma #keepgoing