Part 3: Choosing Who You Become After Survival

You survived. You left. Now comes the part people rarely talk about — rebuilding. 

In the final episode of this 3-part series, I'm talking about what it really looks like to rebuild your life after chaos. 

Learning to trust yourself again. Getting used to peace. And figuring out who you are when survival mode is no longer running your life.

Rebuilding doesn't happen in one big moment.

It happens in small choices.... one peaceful decision at a time.

If you're learning how to live a life that finally feels like yours, this conversation is for you.

Transcript

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This is part three of my series about what happens after you leave. Part one was about timing when you finally feel safe enough to talk about what happened. Part two was about something I didn't expect. What happens when survival ends and identity gets loud. Today I want to talk about the part people don't explain very well. Rebuilding your life. Welcome to Freckles and Chaos. A lot of people imagine rebuilding your life like it's this huge turning point. Like one day you wake up and everything is different, and that's not what it looks like. Rebuilding is quiet. It's choosing peace when your nervous system used to run on chaos. It's learning to sit in a calm house and realizing nothing bad is about to happen. It's small decisions, little ones that slowly become your new normal. And I've said it a thousand times. Peace is my very new favorite thing. If I have to get in the car to go somewhere, the music goes off, and I love listening to music. I love music. But if I'm in the car, I shut the music off, and I just sit in silence and drive because it's my new very favorite thing. Learning yourself again. One of the strangest parts of healing is realizing you have to learn yourself again. When you've spent years adapting to someone else's moods, someone else's anger, someone else's control. You stop asking yourself what you want. You stop asking what feels right to you. Rebuilding means asking those questions again. What do I enjoy? What kind of life do I actually want? Who am I when I'm not surviving something? And it's fucking crazy because it's real. You know, Zach Zach went off to college and now it's time to heal from the shit that I've lived through. I don't have anybody to take care of, so I'm doing my healing now. But I'm also trying to figure out who the fuck I am too. Like I know who I am. I know who I want to be. I know what I want to do. But it's learning it. And that is really difficult. It sounds crazy, but it's real. The nervous system adjustment. This is something nobody explained to me. Your body gets used to chaos. Your brain gets used to being on alert all the time. So when things are finally calm, it almost feels uncomfortable. You might question the quiet, you might wait for something bad to happen. That doesn't mean you're broken. It means your body is learning safety again, and that takes time. I find myself now to this day. Mark and I don't fight. We don't argue. Like when we're pissy with each other, it's when we're at fucking work. But even at home, we're not even mad at each other. Like we're not fighting. If I get in his way, like when we come home from the store, we go to the store, we get groceries, we come home. If I step in front of him or I get in his way, I am always apologizing. And I am so quick to say, Oh my god, I'm sorry. And he's like, Why are you sorry? You don't have to be sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. But that is something that I still catch myself doing. I apologize all the time and for nothing. Nothing, I do nothing wrong, but I'm quick to apologize for everything. The power of peace for me now, peace is everything. Peace in my home, peace in my relationships, peace in my mind. That doesn't mean life is perfect, but it means chaos is no longer normal. And once you experience real peace, you stop tolerating things that threaten it. I'm gonna go as far to say I even want peace at work. And I'm not gonna sit here and say that it's easy to have peace at work because you're at work and you're busy, you got a lot of shit going on. But I consider I hate drama. I don't want the drama, and we don't have much drama at all at the club, and now that you know we don't have any kids at home, we don't have to listen to their nonsense about you know whatever the hell's going on at school or with their friends, or and it's not our trauma, but still, do you know what I mean? I can't do the drama, so peace that is the power of peace. Not having any of that around, and it is most definitely the number one thing in our house. Peace. The truth about rebuilding. Rebuilding isn't about becoming some perfectly healed version of yourself, it's about becoming a more honest version of yourself. You know what you won't tolerate, you know what matters, you know your strength, and you know you survived something that once felt impossible to escape. So I'm gonna go back to what I said earlier. I'm still learning to get past the shit that I've lived through. And it wasn't just my last relationship, every relationship I've ever been in, there was some form of abuse. The last one just had all of it fucking combined, but each relationship I've ever been in was abuse in some way. So it's not like one relationship caused it, it's been every relationship. And when Mark and I started dating, you know, his last relationship wasn't fantastic. And when we started dating, we made the decision we are not gonna fight, we are not gonna argue about stupid shit. And if we fight more than we don't, we're walking away. We made that decision a long time ago because if you're fighting constantly, you're not fucking happy. In my eyes, that's my own personal opinion. So I don't tolerate any bullshit at all, and he doesn't either, so that is a giant plus. We're on the same fucking page, and that's what matters. Leaving was the first step. Healing takes time, but rebuilding, rebuilding is where your life begins to feel like yours again, and it does. I we Mark and I both we can do whatever in the hell we want. It doesn't matter. We can sit at home and nap all day if we want to on our day off, we can go somewhere and eat lunch, we can go somewhere and eat dinner, we can have sex in the fucking kitchen if we want to, living room, whatever, it doesn't matter. We can do whatever we want because we both are rebuilding our lives, and I just shared on Facebook on my personal Facebook page the other day because you know on TikTok you he you see all these videos and you can put sound to videos. There's a song I listened to on repeat some days. Depends on the day, depends on how I'm feeling. It's called Quiet Bruises, and I played it for Mark yesterday for the first time. If I could type Whiskey Circuit, Quiet Bruises by Whiskey Circuit. Uh I shared it on my own personal page because anybody that has lived through abuse of any kind should totally listen to that song. It is so very good, and like I said, I've been listening to it on repeat. It depends on the day. Um, some days it's three or four times, sometimes it's um just once or twice. It really just depends. I can't um I can't not listen to it. It's so good and it's so powerful. And Mark agreed last night when I played it for him, he agreed, and he said, you know, he pointed at me, you've lived your life, I've lived my life. Both of us have been through some shit. So it doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman, everybody that has lived through abuse of any kind needs to hear that song because it is fantastic. So before I go, I want to ask you something. If the chaos in your life disappeared tomorrow, who would you be without it? Just sit with that question. If you guys want to message me, I get mail on Buzzsprout. Um you can post on my Instagram or Facebook page, Freckles and Chaos, or TikTok is also Freckles and Chaos. Message me if you want to respond to that question. I'll repeat it. If the chaos in your life disappeared tomorrow, who would you be without it? It's a good question. If this series resonated with you, take what you need, leave what doesn't fit. And remember, you're allowed to build a life that feels peaceful. Until next time.