Chapter One

My life before marriage? Absolute chaos. And I'm not saying my life after marriage was any less chaotic. But picture a car crash in slow motion, except that the airbags never deploy and instead of getting out, I just turned on the radio and pretended everything was fine.

Coming off the heels of a toxic and traumatic relationship, I was a walking, talking whirlwind of emotional instability. Undiagnosed mental health problems made sure of that. My coping strategy? Self-medication, booze, drugs and a liberal sprinkling of it'll all work out

I convinced myself that I was thriving. Independence? Check. Rediscovering my identity? Double-check. In reality, my "progress" was held together with duct tape and vodka cranberries, a flimsy façade that fooled exactly no one, least of all myself. But hey, denial is not just a river in Egypt; it's where I was backstroking with Olympic fervor.

Weeknight partying became my full-time occupation, and I wanted to be Employee of the Month each month. Add to that a revolving door of men whose names I rarely remembered, and you would think that exhaustion would have caught up with me. Instead, chaos fueled a delicious kind of numbness: a blissful distraction from the glaring truth that my life was a mess and my relationships were about as stable as a Jenga tower on a vibrating table. I was reckless, detached, and constantly chasing the next thrill, not because it made me happy but because it was easier than confronting the void that followed me around like a sad puppy.

One night in particular stands out as a pretty decent representation of how things were going for me then. I had been out, fully immersed in what felt like the "time of my life," only to wake up at 3 a.m. to a man I didn't recognize shaking me awake. The disorientation was immediate, a sickening realization slowly forming. I had somehow let myself into the wrong apartment—his apartment—and crawled into the wrong bed, his bed, while he was still at work. The details are still a blur, but I remember arguing with him, insisting that this was my friend's place, that I was simply waiting for him. The night still comes to me in fractured memories, none of them pleasant.

What struck me most about that night was not the embarrassment or confusion. It was not the shame spiral or the logistical nightmare of retracing my steps. It was how absurdly lucky I'd been. He was kind. Patient, even. He waited while I gathered myself, slowly woke up, and tried to piece together the reality of where I was. He helped me find my clothes, which I had carelessly scattered across his bedroom in my drunken attempt to get undressed and climb into bed. I don't remember his name, just the overwhelming feeling of relief that this situation hadn't gone worse than it did, that this stranger showed me a kindness I probably didn't deserve.

That night should've been a wake-up call. You'd think stumbling into a stranger's apartment and playing Goldilocks with his bed would've hit the brakes on my spiraling behavior. Nope. Instead, it was just another blurry page in the novel of What Not to Do When You're Trying to Heal, the consequences of which I continued to avoid as long as I could. It was easier to live in distraction than to confront the growing void inside. Nights where my inhibitions dissolved into oblivion, and mornings where I woke up in unfamiliar places, with people whose names I couldn't remember, my belongings always scattered in disarray; A constant that offered no comfort. These nights became my routine. There were mornings where I'd have to call into work, my voice shaky, trying to piece together an excuse for my absence while silently panicking over the fragmented memories of the night before.