Notes I Almost Didn’t Hear: A Story of Survival

I woke up choking Tuesday morning.

Not from a dream, exactly – but from the grip it left on my body. My throat was clamped shut as if a belt had been yanked around it. And not just as if – my mind had returned me to a moment that happened. A moment in the past where a belt became a weapon in the hands of someone who once said they loved me.

Now, in the morning light, I was awake; but not really. I was still there. Still in it. The nightmare hadn’t ended; it had simply changed mediums. I was reliving it on loop, not in flashbacks exactly, but in a kind of slow bleed of panic that stretched into the day.

The sheets were too heavy. The air too thin. I couldn’t move without trembling, couldn’t think without spiraling. My body was on fire, but not in the beautiful, musical way I usually describe emotion. This was a fire that consumed from the inside – a panic that kept getting louder as the hours passed.

Somehow, amid that noise, I managed to type a message to my therapist. It wasn’t eloquent. It didn’t need to be.

“I am so sorry its so early. I need a followup appointment”

That was the first note. The first sound I let myself make in a day that felt otherwise engulfed by silence and chaos. It wasn’t the start of healing, not yet. But it was a tether. A thread. A faint, stubborn hum beneath the scream of everything else.

It was survival. Barely. But it was survival.

The truth is that this spiral didn’t begin Tuesday.

It started on Monday, in the quiet of a therapy room, where I cracked open something I had kept buried for too long. I told my therapist what I’ve never been able to fully say out loud: that I don’t know how to show myself grace. That I don’t know how to offer myself love without recoiling. That the physical and sexual abuse I suffered taught me to loathe myself before I ever had a chance to know who I was.

I told her things I usually keep locked behind a smile. And when the session ended, I didn’t leave in a safe place. I left exposed – ripped raw without having used all of the tools to stitch myself back together. The wounds didn’t close. They festered as open wounds do when exposed and not properly tended. And with each passing hour, they widened.

The nightmares began in the quiet of the night. The belt. The body memory. The waking panic.

And the next day, the darkness started swallowing me whole.

My therapist’s first available appointment was for the following day, Wednesday. I stared at that gap between now and then like it was a chasm I wasn’t sure I could cross. I wasn’t safe. I wasn’t grounded. I wasn’t even entirely in my body.

But then, through the numbness, I heard the phone ding. It was my therapist’s front office. A cancellation. They could move me to Tuesday afternoon. A sliver of time opened up. A space I might survive long enough to reach.

They emailed more than once. Kept trying. Kept checking in. Each ding was a lifeline, even when I couldn’t find the strength to answer right away.

I was not okay. But someone was trying to reach me. That mattered more than I knew at the time.

The darkness didn’t ease. It grew.

It wrapped around my ribcage like a second skin. And as I waited for that appointment, time slowed into molasses. Thoughts I had worked so hard to quiet over the years came roaring back with terrifying clarity. I remembered my three previous attempts – each one different, each one shaped by fear so thick I couldn’t breathe through it. I remembered the quiet decision each time, the numbness that made it feel like giving up wasn’t surrender, but mercy.

And then I remembered the moments – small, burning fragments where I somehow survived. The so-called failures that I now know were acts of survival. Each one a glitch in the darkness. A snag in the clean exit. A chance I wasn’t sure I deserved but had somehow been given.

This time, I was scared not because I had a plan, but because I felt the edge again. I felt how close it was. I didn’t want to take that next step, but I feared the darkness might convince me anyway.

And then – light.

Tiny, flickering, insistent light. My wife. My best friend. My anchors.

They weren’t called in because someone needed to fix me. They weren’t burdened with saving me out of obligation. They showed up. They stayed. They held space. They weren’t just lifelines. They were proof that something in this world still saw me. Still loved me. Still heard the notes I couldn’t quite sing for myself.

When I called into the session Tuesday afternoon, I was a mess.

Not metaphorically. Physically. My whole body was folded into fear. Muscles spasmed and locked. My jaw ached from clenching. My stomach had been in knots since I woke. I couldn’t sit still, but I also couldn’t fully move. I was in pain. Real, full-body, soul-deep pain.

I started by telling her about the physical sensations, because it was the only language I could access. Words felt slippery. Unsafe. But my body was speaking loud and clear.

I told her what had happened since Monday, and before I even reached the center of it, I felt the edges of a panic attack blooming under my skin. My hands shook. My voice cracked.

And then came the wall: the thing I couldn’t say. The memory of the beatings and sexual abuse. The threats. The fear lodged in my throat like a stone.

They told me it would be worse if I told. So I never did.

I could feel the words trying to claw their way out. But I couldn’t make my mouth open. I couldn’t make my body let go.

So I started whispering to myself. A quiet, steady mantra:
“I’m not going to heal if I don’t say it. I’m not going to heal if I don’t say it.”

I must’ve said it ten times. Rocking slightly in place. Trying to will myself forward. To break the silence that had kept me prisoner for so long.

I wasn’t trying to be brave. I was trying to survive.

And saying it – finally letting those words fall from my mouth – was the most terrifying and liberating thing I’ve done in a long time.

The words finally came.

They didn’t come cleanly, or all at once. They tore out of me. Raw, jagged, pulled from a place so deep I forgot it was still inside me. I started describing the moment of abuse, and before I even realized what was happening, I was no longer in the therapy room.

I was there again. In it. Living the memory. Feeling the brown leather belt that was his favorite around my neck as he tore into me.

The pain didn’t feel like memory. It felt present. As if the air had turned to ice water, and I was drowning all over again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. My body seized, and the world around me collapsed into that single, unbearable point of terror.

My therapist had to pull me back. Gently, firmly, with calm words that tethered me to now. She reminded me where I was and that I was safe. She had me name objects in the room. Feel items around me. Asked me to press my feet into the floor. To breathe in. To breathe out.

At first, I couldn’t. My chest was too tight. My vision blurry. The panic had taken full hold. But slowly. So slowly. I found my way back to the room. Back to my body. Back to the safety I hadn’t trusted yet but now had to learn how to hold.

And then it broke.

The fear, the tightness, the silence. The words had finally been spoken. The truth had been given space to exist outside of me.

And my body exhaled.

Not all at once. It took time. But with each breath, my muscles released. My heartbeat slowed. The pain didn’t disappear. It just changed. It softened from something screaming inside me to something grounding me.

Every square inch of me still hurt. But this time, it wasn’t from fear. It wasn’t from trauma or darkness or self-loathing.

It was the ache of release. The ache of honesty. The ache of a body that had survived the telling.

And for the first time in days, I didn’t hate the pain.

I relished it.

Because this pain meant I was still here. That I had made it through the worst of the spiral. That I would get to go home to hold my wife, to see my best friend, to curl up next to my sweet little pupper and let myself be held.

That pain reminded me that I get another day.

And that, maybe, the notes I almost didn’t hear were never gone.

I’m still healing.

This post – these words – they’re part of that healing. Writing them is an act of reclaiming something I was taught to bury. For nearly two years, I avoided these memories. I danced around them in therapy, dipped my toes in only to retreat, again and again.

Because for so long, I was told it never happened. I was told I was too sensitive. That I was making it up. That I was the problem. So I stopped speaking. I stopped trusting myself. I stopped fighting back.

And I started believing I deserved every single moment of it. The pain. The silence. The hollowed-out sense of worth. I believed I was fundamentally broken. Unlovable. Too much. Too fragile.

But I wasn’t. I’m not. I was hurt. I was gaslit. I was abused. And now, I’m healing.

And even though it doesn’t feel linear, I still wake up some mornings caught in panic, unsure of the day. I made it through this moment. I’m still here. And that’s not just a survival story. It’s a beginning.

I was saved. Not by some cinematic miracle, but by love. Real, patient, enduring love.

By my wife, who held space when I couldn’t hold myself.
By my best friend, who never once made me feel like a burden.
By my therapist, who listened, even when I couldn’t find the words.
By my own quiet, stubborn resilience.
By the parts of me that refused to stop singing, even in silence.

And if you are reading this, especially if you see yourself in any of it. I want you to know something:
Your pain is real.
Your memories matter.
You are not too much.
You are not alone.
And you deserve love. Not in spite of what you’ve survived, but because you’re still here.

Please, if you’re struggling, reach out. Someone will listen. Someone will believe you. There is help. There is support. And there is hope. Even if it feels impossibly far right now.

Resources for Support (U.S.)

• Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 (24/7, free & confidential)
• The Trevor Project (LGBTQ+ Youth): www.thetrevorproject.org or text START to 678-678
• Trans Lifeline: www.translifeline.org or call 877-565-8860 (run by and for trans people)