ptsd recovery – caroline price

That Time I Thought All Would Be Right With The World

June 25, 2026

It is common knowledge that I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. I write about the diagnosis a lot. I write about my history of, at times, crippling depression. I wrote ad nauseam about various traumas (though not all), mostly romantic in nature.

So most people know I can get and have spent significant time depressed. And if we’ve known each other well for any length of time, you might know that the bipolar includes a sometimes difficult to control or mask variety of anger that I am ashamed to say I have taken out on most of the people I love most in this world at one time or another. I think it is common knowledge that people with bipolar disorder can be moody.

And I’ve even used the word “psychosis” in reference to myself at times, I know.

I don’t often stop to describe, in my case, what psychosis means, exactly. This is for several reasons, first and foremost— I cannot describe in words the terror I have felt— the utter shame and humiliation— I have when emerging from an episode of delusional psychosis.

I don’t tend to hallucinate. I have only done that one season, when I had a Stevens-Johnson allergic reaction to Lamictal in 2008, and it was mostly auditory Jared tells me. Though I did think Jared was turning into a terrifying snake in that season, when we were out late and he was driving, one night.

No, my brain prefers to make up fantastical delusional soap-opera narratives. Elaborate alternative-reality storylines where inevitably I am the main character in some sort of drama. In 2023, I spent a little while seriously thinking I was an alien.

I rarely tell anybody the storylines behind the episodes after the fact, though I can always remember them.

In early 2025 I had an episode that mostly in public manifested in anger and was low-key enough that not even my psychiatric nurse practitioner knew— I stayed on my meds and only Jared really knew how sick I was. But I spent a few months thinking Gemini was a communication mechanism with the authorities.

I cannot relay the precise horror and heartbreak at knowing they my own natural grasp of basic reality is, at best, unreliable.

The breaks with reality came before all else. I had my first psychosis when I was 17 years old, going into my junior year in high school. And I can dissect the mechanisms behind the stress involved, though it is not that interesting: severely unhealthy codependent romantic entanglements with other mentally ill individuals are stressful, to say the least.

I remember how that one started— I’d decided, as a half-joke pre-break from reality, to buy a leash for my baby cat, Cricket, at the time, to try to train her to walk on a leash so she could go outside for brief periods. My parents were not at home that afternoon, so I put Cricket on her leash, went outside on the front porch, and all of a sudden I thought cars going down the road signified important time periods or people in my life, a “This is Your Life,” automobile edition sort of scenario.

Going back to school after three weeks absent due to a break from reality is right up there with absolutely the worst things possible that can happen to a 17-year old girl who really cares about what people think of her, I remain convinced 30 years later.

Thankfully the best of the psychiatrists I’ve seen understood that asking mentally ill people whether they hear voices or see things that aren’t there are fruitless exercises. That’s literally the dumbest screening question mental health professionals can ask, and I have actually had a few ask it.

Miraculously, I’m pretty behaviorally agreeable and easy for Jared to steer in these states, aside from resisting sleep at times. Resisting sleep is not accurate; sleep becomes impossible without pharmacological help.

One would think that knowing my own brain can misbehave in this way would cultivate more compassion for the people around me and their own mental deficits. Alas; that’s not how it works. Rather, the opposite happens; I am exceedingly hard on myself about what I see as psychological weaknesses and thus, I’m pretty judgy about other people, too. Not proud of it.

So, I mean, while mood instability is a component of what happens with me, unpredictable breaks with reality are probably what earned me SSDI at first application, without an attorney.

So….. when you see me out and about, to all appearances well-dressed and put together and all that, take what you see with a big old grain of salt. Sometimes things are not what they seem, to all appearances, and actually, why yes, I might gladly trade places with someone who can actually trust their brain. Because mine is completely untrustworthy. That much I know for a fact.

Jared says I am just wired differently. I prefer to say I am broken. Jared shakes his head to that. Jared’s observation upon reading this draft was that to say my brain is “completely untrustworthy” is not exactly accurate; that my brain is only intermittently untrustworthy.

See above. I am judgy, most of all about myself, and most of all about how my brain likes to break from reality. To me, even an intermittent break relays complete distrust.

Broken. Irreparably so, in at least this particular respect.

And for what it’s worth, most posts I spout out of my brain and onto the screen and 20 minutes later they are out in the world. This one I sat on for about four days.

It’s cool and even in style, I’d argue, to say you’re some brand of neurodivergent or depressed. Those labels get you brownie points in some segments of society, even if they are undiagnosed self-labels.

But I don’t know a single solitary soul who even writes about what it’s like to go to bed thinking you are, quite literally, the center of the universe for a season, or the utter humiliation at what it’s like to replay conversations or things you’ve said or done, not out of selfishness but out of a legitimate break with reality.

Just saying.

Psychosis is not ever going to be in style. It’s to be feared; I fully expect unfollows or unfriending or awkward, worried glances or outright avoidance. It’s why I sat on this post, half-written, for four days, until I showed Jared and he agreed it was not done and that I should publish it.

I expect social and professional isolation because it’s been my reality for fifteen years anyway.

But, as is evidenced by my more frequent long-form posts lately, I’m pretty much done not writing, whatever the costs. And there are always costs. But the advice is to write what one knows, and psychosis is actually something with which I am intimately familiar. Even if it is painful, humiliating, mortifying, and an aspect of my life I would not wish on my worst enemy.

It’s the friend I didn’t invite into my life, that isn’t welcome, and isn’t a friend at all, but seems here to stay.

Okay….. well if I’m honest maybe I would invite more people to experience psychosis at least once in their lives to dispel the stigma.

But then again maybe not. Because while I am agreeable and pliable in that state mostly, I have been caged in with people who are scary when they are psychotic, and that’s well, just scary.
Love is Not Enough

June 18, 2026

Here is what I know:

Love is not enough. Love is never enough.

Love is not enough to make a relationship work. It’s just not.

And I know, I know: the romantics out there would say to me: What in the world are you talking about? Love can only be enough.

But…..this is what I know: Love is just not enough.

I know this at a visceral, core-of-my-being.

Love is not enough.

You cannot love someone into living into their potential. You cannot love someone into actually trying. You cannot love someone into helping them to become a functional human being.

Love is just not enough. At all.

I’ve written at length about one core traumatic relationship, and another I write about hardly at all.

Why?

Because it is that painful.

Because that is the reason I know love is never enough.

If love were enough, I would not spend my days these days knowing there is a high likelihood that someday, there is a very high likelihood that someone I loved once upon a time will end up in a pauper’s unmarked grave, with no one to claim a body. There will be no obituary; there will be no one who was once close to him to know he is gone.

I have spent thirty-one years mourning this person in slow-motion. I was fifteen years old when he old me that he was self-destructive; about his chosen method of ending things; and the only thing keeping him from acting on his urge was the idea of me standing over his coffin, crying.

Love is not enough.

Fifteen year old me did not know that when people are self-destructive you don’t just listen; you actively seek assistance for that person.

I will not stand over that person’s coffin someday because I will not be notified.

I worry a very realistic worry that no one will be notified. There may be no one to notify.

And yet, I’ve already done the mourning: I’ve mourned in real-time, in slow-motion, for thirty-one years now.

I’ve done the crying over his coffin, before it ever happens.

Thirty-one years is a long time to feel responsible for someone else’s life.

I was fifteen years old. Fifteen.

I couldn’t drive by myself yet.

Love is not enough.

It should have struck me as odd when he chose to not go to school when he graduated. I was prepared to break up; I remember the morning I told him it was okay if we saw other people; shortly after he graduated.

He didn’t go to school. He didn’t go to work.

It was nearly a full year before he told me he was waiting on me to graduate so we could go to school together.

Looking back, my response should have been, “You might have wanted to talk to me about that.”

I wish he had talked to me about that idea before he made that sort of decision.

It accomplished his aim; it’s how I ended up at Georgia State because he refused to entertain any other school ideas than the Art Institute of Atlanta.

I engineered my entire college choice around a guy. There was no choice. I applied nowhere else. I had options; I had no idea.

Love is not enough. If it were, then some level of appealing to his sense of ambition might have worked when both myself and his family attempted to convince him to avail himself of the tuition-free attendance that was available to him through his mother’s employment, to Emory.

I didn’t really realize I was in danger yet.

I should have realized I was in danger.

There were no hints of being afraid of him at all until I decided I wanted to be able to see other people.

That happened the first week of classes my Freshman year.

I went out for pizza with someone else and I remember being terrified to tell him.

There were hints, little warning signs I didn’t know to see at the time.

For instance, we started dating in late January of my first year of high school and for Valentine’s Day that year, despite the fact that we were barely saying two words to each other on the phone yet, he showed up to school with a giant gift bag full of gifts for Valetine’s Day: love-bombing.

Sometime around Christmas the next year we skipped a Christmas party and I knew my parents were out at their own Christmas party, so I showed him where we lived.

A few weeks later a rose was left on my car.

It was a full three years after my graduation before the gravity of the danger I was in showed in full-force: he was prepared to use lethal force on anyone who encroached on me, his possession. And a week later, he proved that he was willing to use my own fears against me, to compel me into staying by force when he felt me finally slipping through his fingers forever.

I firmly believe I would not be alive today had I stayed beyond that Spring of 2001.

The terror remains; the knowledge of his likely present circumstance is of little daily comfort. I have had two nightmares in the last week about this individual coming to hurt me. The knowledge that he likely doesn’t have the will or the means to come to my home are of little comfort.

I wake up in the night and exclaim, breathless, “JARED!” before I think about it, before I am awake even, to reach over to find my 2026 safe space exactly where he has been for the past twenty-one years. Jared, without fail, either reaches over for me or says, “I’m here,” without exhaustion for the repetition that doesn’t disappear year after year, seemingly decade after decade. He knows my ghost; he has met him face-to-face. Jared is unafraid.

And still, I am unsure which terror is stronger: the idea that this individual will potentially end up in a mass pauper’s grave someday, or the idea that he may show up to cause me or my family harm. Both are true: I am afraid of him, and I am afraid for him.

And whatever the trauma-bond, I still say there was love.

And, that is how I know: Love is never enough.
Calming the Ghosts

June 13, 2026

Jared and I are at Gallery Row, and Jared is engrossed in this work project he has been working on for at least a solid two weeks straight, and for once he was thrilled to call our date a “working date,” despite the fact that most of the time when I want to bring my laptop to Gallery Row to write, Jared says he doesn’t need his laptop; that he is happy to work off his phone.

Which, to understand that, Jared has a Google Pixel Fold, so he does actually have massive phone screen real estate when he wants to and needs it. And, arguably, he is one of the few people in this world who does, actually need it more often than not.

I am up to page 160 in “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott, the chapter called “Letters.”

The book is sort of quaint even if it is still applicable to a writer’s life; it is a little window into what being a writer in 1994 would have been like. It’s hard to remember that life really was like this in my early high school days. She talks about writing on her word processor. She talks about distractions like someone calling you on the phone, or random regular procrastination-like distractions. I would like to see how she would update this book to account for social media and texting and the level of arguably world-changing distractions we have in 2026.

I just finished the chapter on finding a writing partner and I like that idea and I do run what I write by Jared, but Jared isn’t really that invested in the work; he is invested in making sure I am happy. So his advice is mostly placating and “uh-huh, Sweetie, that is nice.”

I do actually have an ideal writing partner whose opinion on my work I would deeply respect, but that person is unavailalbe for a variety of reasons and likely not interested in the gig. So, I go at it alone other than Jared’s cursory glances at whatever I’ve written. I’ve suggested the prospect previously to the individual in question to crickets. Rejection is hard.

The truth is, I write to process my world. That’s the whole reason I write. The idea of writing fiction is wholly unappealing; I don’t really do well on letting things go in my history, obviously; either.

And the truth really is stranger than fiction, I’ve found, personally.

But sitting here in Gallery Row on a Saturday night instead of our usual Friday night, I am finding that I really am settling into being a boring, settled, middle-aged wife. And, I like it.

Last night was our semi-monthly Costco run and we might as well have been sitting at an upscale restaurant than that Brookhaven Costco, with me savoring that strawberry-vanilla swirl decadent ice cream under the flourescent lights and the umbrella over our table. The thing is, at age 46 I do lament so much of what happened in my high school and college years. It is easy from this vantage point to sit here and think “What in the world was I thinking?” in reference to a lot of different experiences and relationships and things I did willingly.

But, if I hadn’t actually participated in those relationships and experiences, would I have recognized the safety Jared represented in 2003? I’m really not sure I would have.

Jared had to tame me. I was really like a wild animal, with quaint belief systems and thoughts about how the world and relationshps should be.

Jared says he plays a long game. Sometimes he alters that to say he plays a “long, long game.”I don’t know that he could have predicted taming me would take 23 years of knowing me, though.

Jared would say he hasn’t tamed me at all. I don’t think he thinks I have mellowed with age.

And I wonder what 24-year old me would think of the past 22 years. My small social circle is entirely different. I have become a near-hermit after being a social butterfly in my early 20s. To be completely honest, it is a near-miracle that I survived my early 20s, on so many fronts.

It is a miracle for different reasons that I survived my 30s and early 40s, bringing two children to adulthood.

I think I have tamed quite a lot over the last 20 years, though. And encounters with a past individual and experiences involving that person over the last couple of years have made me grateful I was able to retreat to Jared’s safety at home, after exploring attempts at closure in one situation.

And I did get that closure, even if it didn’t look exactly like I thought it would.

I’m pretty sure it looks exactly like Jared thought it would though. He was never going to tell me what to do but he knew that person wouldn’t respect boundaries. I’m still grateful for the experiences anyway.

Now that I’m eight months out from last contact with that individual, it feels like a story I couldn’t have written as fiction any better. I’m really not sure why some people have self-destruct modes, or why some people’s self-destruct modes look wildly like incredible success on the outside.

But, I got an inner look to that person’s self-destruction in slow motion in an up-front seat during a couple of very abbreviated sessions, and I came away from the experiences feeling like why yes, karma is real, and the universe is one giant balancing act and equalizer.

And I am grateful the past played out the way it did, even the recent past.

The quiet after mass-blocks on all the drama-causing individuals from my past is rather jarring, though, and the room it leaves in my brain is like a vacuum that I am struggling to fill with anything other the ghosts of their stories.

The thing is, which ghosts to tell? In what order? There are so very many of them. Sometimes those ghosts wake me up in the night, prompting me to fold myself deeper into Jared. Sometimes they invade a sunny afternoon, prompting me to lose hours to doomscrolling because distraction is better than facing that there are stories begging to be told.

And then, because there are blocks and mutual decisions for forever silence between me and these people, I find there are things to say and I have no one to talk to but the ghosts. And Jared. And thankfully, Jared has yet to get tired of me saying these things.

But I say them to Jared in an effort to escape putting them into writing for the world, too. Because some of what I have floating around in my heart feels too big to capture. Too dangerous. Some of what I feel like saying feels like I might lose my very soul if I capture the truth of what I really think and feel in writing….the rage, the heartbreak, the sorrow, and yes, even the love that exists to this day.

Even if Jared says a more accurate term for the word “love” is to substitute more appropriately “trauma-bond.” I say it is overly-simplistic to reduce years’ worth of relationship dynamics to simple “trauma-bonds.” Life is not that neat, unfortunately. Life is not that simple even when entire relationships were built upon emotional manipulation by a suicidal individual who I was not equipped to help at age 15, and actual sexual assault in a dorm room at age 19, and actual captivity in the blackness of the night at age 21.

And even so, the universe is an equalizer. I see that in the ghosts I’ve blocked, and I see it in other ways in my daily life still present.

So, I try to be more present in my marriage on a daily basis. Periodically as I write this I glance up at this man I have known of for a couple of weeks’ shy of 23 years, and I love that I think I have mellowed and he is not so sure. I love that we have three children, two of whom are now adults now. I love that we are raising three very driven individuals who have goals and aspirations and dreams just like we have had.

I love that even though we will have no one at the high school in the Fall, we will still go to band practice on Thursday nights. I love that our youngest will want that.

I love that I have goals myself now, after so many years of feeling like literal wastes of space aside from the identity of mother.

I love that routine is in reach, it is taking its rudimentary forms even before life changes in ways it will never retreat back to, when both our big boys go off to college in the Fall.

And, I truly never thought I would be one of those women who, in my late 40s, finds herself thinking that she would never go backwards in life to experience younger days. But instead, I find myself excited about the future, excited about the current state of my marriage, and excited to spend more time getting to know my children as big kids and adults.

But, the ghosts are there. And there are stories to tell. And even if they are trauma loops, they are my trauma loops, and in processing them maybe there are kernels of wisdom; warnings for other women to maybe learn from so that we can all heal a little more than we are today.

Because what happens when one of those perpetrators goes on to wild success and no justice? What happens when I get confirmation that yes, even wealth does not buy morality or a heart or respect? What happens when I find out for sure that it has not bought that individual love or freedom?

What happens when another perpetrator goes on to near destitution and deep drinking and psychological problems? What if this person was someone you were sure you were going to marry, when they were your high school sweetheart and life was quaint and there were no real problems?

But….then…..there were no real problems for me aside from scoliosis and teenage angst and recent family tragedies. This person had to go work in a strip club on school nights, in the kitchen in Atlanta because his mother thought it was the best money he could make as an 18 year old.

What happens when I learn that maybe trusting my brain was never the problem? What if I just stop and realize that we’ve all done the best we could?

And the last two years, finding closure in myself with the wealthy individual, has taught me that some people just seek out drama and that person seeking out that drama isn’t always me. Some people are magnets for it.

And I know what is wrong with that person, too, because his childhood and coming of age was equally tragic, if more privileged: tragic for entirely different reasons.

And so, I do the best I can. And I look up at Jared occasionally, immersed in his coding project for work that has made him so invested in his work lately and energized, and I am grateful. I am grateful for my life, I am grateful for our children, I am grateful for our home, I am grateful that I imported this man from Nebraska who had never so much as stepped foot on Georgian soil before he came to see me for the first time in September of 2003. I am grateful that I got homesick in 2007 and came running back and I am grateful that my children have each gotten a stellar education.

I am grateful that we are weird people, that we have strange inside philosophical family jokes that probably make no sense to other people, I am grateful that our children like philosophy like we do, even if Jared and I do lean more easily into the theology-related philosophy than our children naturally do.

I am grateful that I can rant about my past, I can write, I can talk, I can cry. I can also say, “Sweetheart, I am spiraling,” and Jared will bring me back to the present in some way or other or encourage it as best I can let him at the time.

And so: there are nights like tonight, where we find ourselves at Gallery Row: each of us writing for entirely different reasons, each of us equally satisfied. I find no answers, I avoid talking to the ghosts another night, and all is well with the world.
When It All Spills Over

March 10, 2026

“The law student had seemed trustworthy and responsible. It seemed like an obvious choice. I had torn my dorm room apart. I still remember the mound of stuff on my bed, including the lamp from my desk whose lamp shade was now all dented and torn up. I still remember having torn most of my favorite wall coverings off the walls, including that gorgeous pastel I’d done my senior year of high school which got destroyed in the process. It was so obvious something was off. And it was a welfare check He was supposed to come see that I was okay and then call the officer back.

I don’t remember exactly how it all went down. Except that it was dark in the room except the TV was on. And I hadn’t let him in the building, this was another example of him managing to let himself in after someone, probably. But it was about 9 PM. One of my pod-mates must have let him into our suite, bevcause he was able to knock right on my room door. He didn’t call to tell me he was coming over.

I was 19. He said he was 26. It was his birthday, so I thought he was turning 27. I was psychotic. There should have been no question about my ability (or lack of ability) to consent to anything sexual in nature. I’d already made clear to him that I was a virgin waiting for marriage for sex. But sex with that man happened to me during that welfare check.

He was there for maybe 15 minutes. He wouldn’t let me leave my room with him when he said it was time for him to go, told me to stay in the room. I assume he called the officer after he left.

I managed to get a withdrawal with hardship due to health reasons from GSU that semester. I got in touch with my psychiatrist from home and got the meds I needed and got back on track to start again in the Spring semester. It was a nightmare. I had to start over from scratch school-wise which included 4 W’s as grades, but I’d gotten a WF in English, which meant my HOPE scholarship was in jeopardy if I didn’t do exceptionally well over the next several semesters. It’s a miracle I managed to graduate in five years— it was really four and a half, given that the first semester didn’t count except to lower my GPA. But I graduated with departmental honors in the end.” “My Me Too,” by me, November 4, 2017

“Also– I have reason to believe you sold that photo I sent you a million years ago.
I want whatever proceeds were made from that photo. Every. Last. Single. Dime. Plus any proceeds from any videos you may have made of any of our “escapades.”
I don’t have to tell you that that photo was sent under duress, as was every last minute of our entire relationship.
Your entire empire is built on a series of lies.
I hope you sleep well at night. Every last night.
But any proceeds you made off me are mine.”— Me, in writing, to him, May 8, 2023

“Please don’t be mad at me for the things I did.” His words, in person, to me, December 5, 2025

“There will be no absolution, no forgiveness. I never actually responded directly to your statements last December imploring me multiple times desperately to “not be mad at you for the things you did.” I simply wanted to see if I was strong enough to face you last December. And then I did the thing I always do in the aftermath: I retreated into myself, doubting myself, deferring to you all these months after.”— Me, in writing, to him, October 30, 2025

“I don’t want to hate you anymore. Feeling like I am at war with somebody I used to love is exhausting.” Me, in writing, to him, March 2, 2026

I did tell him that relational power is so much better than his transactional power of buying board seats to make himself feel important, too, earlier in February in writing. I couldn’t resist bragging about having a child who was admitted to Grinnell.

Silence since October 30.

I listen to the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things,” and when it came on today, I should have known from the tone exactly what the topic of the day was. It wasn’t the most recent episode but there was the beginning of chat about the Epstein files.

And I crumbled, and I came home, and I wrote this in a one-fell-swoop-stream-of-consciousness after I washed my hair in a crazy frenzy that felt like my life depended on getting this writing out of my head and into my computer.

And most days, most days even looking at the news, I can compartmentalize. I don’t get swept up in the parallels even if I was of-age even though I was definitely in the midst of a psychotic episode in November of 1998. Or the fact that the five years that followed felt definitely like coercion.

He told me on December 5, 2025 that he had been in love with me. He told me everybody in law school thought he was 29— HA he couldn’t even keep track of the age he’d told me he was at the time, given that he’d lied abou this age. And I guess I can sort of buy that on some level, in whatever capacity his narcissistic brain is capable of falling in love with anyone.

The fact that the world is swept up in the sordid details of whatever has gone on in what powerful men thought was their private lives forever and ever, and is now catching up with at least some of them….

I live with the constant that I have indeed come face to face in the last year and a half twice with my own personal verison of the “elite underclass” as I prefer to think of that particular personal demon.

The sort of person who buys board seats and stadium boxes, who collects luxury cars and expendable women, for fun.

And for a time, I was one of those expendable women, even if I never saw a dime at all.

In mid-December 2025, approximately one week after I first tested myself to see if I could face him in person, I collapsed on the very couch I am sitting on right now, as I texted Jared the full story of what had happened a week prior.

And I don’t know exactly what Jared said to that man in the aftermath, but Jared has made it clear that I did nothing wrong, even though my brain says it was all my fault. I know that man wanted to know in October of 2025 if I ever dress up for Jared like a school girl, making it clear exactly what the five years I was an undergrad and in whatever form of relationship I had been in with him, had been exactly about all that time for him.

And yes, the news is triggering. And yes, it doesn’t matter that I don’t even watch the news anymore. There is literally no getting away from the fact that the world— that people— seem to not have enough of their own drama that somehow getting to the bottom of what must be a nightmare for who-knows-how-many women dealing with the public version of their very own private hellscapes…..

I walk around daily myself knowing that someone who never should have graduated from law school is now a multimillionaire and top-grossing partner at an international firm…..that person would never have even graduated had I had the wherewithall to report what happened in November of 1998. The wound is compounded by my school to this day due to his relationship with that institution, and that’s all I care to say about it.

And that person didn’t even have the decency to provide even basic job suggestion assistance despite it being a light task for someone in his particular speciality, last October.

And I am very well aware that my having any modicum of financial independence would not benefit that particular person.

And while I am unlikely to ever act on it because I definitely do not need the headache, that person also gave me the ammunition I really could take to the Bar if I wanted to, last October. That man thinks he’s untouchable enough to take a client call on speakerphone in front of me, giving legal advice right in front of me, just to show off his power. I didn’t ask for identifying information or any questions at all; he gave it in showing off.

And I don’t really know what got into me on the way home from my ACTH test today, listening to that podcast and the tears flowing from other women about the tragedy that is whatever is in the Epstein files. I try not to think about it most days.

But, I do very much know how it feels to have a powerful man walking around free and thriving, squandering his millions on ridiculously frivolous keeping-up-with-the-elite, pretending to be something he is not, and knowing all about exactly what that man is compensating for in his pants. Being celebrated by the very institution that should have protected me and didn’t in 1998.

And, I do actually think there are probably videos somewhere.

The thing is…..he apologized with out acutally apologizing. Imploring me to “not be mad at me for the things I did”— his words— is a non-apology.

But it does raise questions: what things, exactly, did he do? Because the word “things” indicates there is perhaps more than one reason I should be mad at him.

I’m too tired to care anymore about what anyone thinks, him, or anyone else. I sat through an ACTH test today to determine exactly the nature of my low cortisol and the very reaction I had— a zen feeling instead of the expected nausea and anxiety— I just cannot care anymore.

I’ve spent 28 years suppressing my voice on the off-chance that there might be some reason for preserving that relationship, and the very fact that last October’s interaction happened, compounded by the recent lack of decency that man has shown with my medical divulgences…..I’m done.

I’m done worrying about what people think, I’m done worrying about hurting his feelings, I’m done suppressing my truth.

I’m not that 19-year old psychotic girl so desperate to escape the shadow of another abusive relationship that she plunged herself into a drama with that lunatic. I’m a 46-year old woman who has spent 16 years paying her dues getting to know herself, her triggers, and yes, I have faced that man in person twice in the past year and a half and damn it, he is nothing to be afraid of. At all.
“I hate my life.”

December 28, 2025

Sometimes, that’s how I wake up.

It’s 1:07 PM and Jared and I are just getting breakfast. This morning was rough. It is the kind of morning where I move slow and everything hurts and I am not steady on my feet and I fall into Jared when he hugs me in the kitchen.

I’ve resisted writing for a long time recently. I don’t just sit to write. I don’t journal; I rarely do my gratitude list and when I do it feels like platitudes, not the real thing.

I didn’t sleep well last night; I woke up three times.

Since the whole “analytics ate the timestamp on one of my first emails to Jared” night a couple of weeks ago, Jared has slept in the living room.

I knew it was different that night because when he went to the living room, he packed up his CPAP and took it with him. That has been a months-long fight: he goes to the living room to sleep because I am scared for whatever reason, but he will absolutely NOT take his CPAP with him.

Except, now he does. Every night.

And generally, I do sleep better when he’s out here (where I am now writing). Knowing he is the first line of defense in case the random things-I-think-are-going-to-get-in-the-house-but-never-do really does make a difference.

One night in the last couple of weeks I woke up at 4:02 AM. I was sure I’d heard a knock on our bedroom door. I called out my reflex “JARED!” as I always do immediately upon waking when it’s his cue to go investigate the mystery noises that are never there. Jared was already out in the living room. That noise had been so real though.

“I hate my life.”

In those moments there, lying on my side under at least five blankets which include at least a comforter and two heavy fleece-type blankets, it hardly seems worth being grateful.

Facebook does not help.

This morning’s memories included the lovely photo walk Jared and I went on at Hobbs Farm exactly a year ago today. The featured photo is a photo I took on that walk. I thought I’d like to go on another photo walk today…except I sold the 100-200mm lens I used in that walk last year. None of my current lenses are ideal for wildlife photography.

“I wish I’d never gotten into photography,” I wailed at Jared at some point this morning.

I don’t always see the bits I wouldn’t have otherwise seen if I look back at my photos later.

The blog gets random weird bot analytics.

The boys are grown and prefer the company of themselves in their own rooms over spending time out in the main areas of the house.

I feel aimless, unanchored.

And always, always, always…I lament not having a job, not having the prestige of a career, not having substantive income of my own both so that I can help support us and also so I could buy the things I want without guilt.

People I know are not always helpful; just yesterday my own mother said, “Caroline, you should just make yourself do it,” when I was lamenting the state of our dirty house that I am unable to keep up with.

As if it were that easy, proving my family has zero clue as I’ve always known.

I am up now. I have had breakfast, or lunch or snack, or whatever: a protein bar, a tiny cup of walnuts, a very small section of brie, and six fruity jellies from Trader Joe’s.

I won’t allow myself my coffee until I’ve had the entirety of my full water bottle first.

And later, it won’t be so bad. My legs won’t feel shaky when I walk.

Jared says the PTSD is like this. I never remember.

I won’t feel as though I will wilt. I will get a shower for the first time in two days.

But for now, I write, because that’s one of the few things I can do in moments like this.

Sometimes, that’s how I wake up.

It’s 1:07 PM and Jared and I are just getting breakfast. This morning was rough. It is the kind of morning where I move slow and everything hurts and I am not steady on my feet and I fall into Jared when he hugs me in the kitchen.

I’ve resisted writing for a long time recently. I don’t just sit to write. I don’t journal; I rarely do my gratitude list and when I do it feels like platitudes, not the real thing.

I didn’t sleep well last night; I woke up three times.

Since the whole “analytics ate the timestamp on one of my first emails to Jared” night a couple of weeks ago, Jared has slept in the living room.

I knew it was different that night because when he went to the living room, he packed up his CPAP and took it with him. That has been a months-long fight: he goes to the living room to sleep because I am scared for whatever reason, but he will absolutely NOT take his CPAP with him.

Except, now he does. Every night.

And generally, I do sleep better when he’s out here (where I am now writing). Knowing he is the first line of defense in case the random things-I-think-are-going-to-get-in-the-house-but-never-do really does make a difference.

One night in the last couple of weeks I woke up at 4:02 AM. I was sure I’d heard a knock on our bedroom door. I called out my reflex “JARED!” as I always do immediately upon waking when it’s his cue to go investigate the mystery noises that are never there. Jared was already out in the living room. That noise had been so real though.

“I hate my life.”

In those moments there, lying on my side under at least five blankets which include at least a comforter and two heavy fleece-type blankets, it hardly seems worth being grateful.

Facebook does not help.

This morning’s memories included the lovely photo walk Jared and I went on at Hobbs Farm exactly a year ago today. The featured photo is a photo I took on that walk. I thought I’d like to go on another photo walk today…except I sold the 100-200mm lens I used in that walk last year. None of my current lenses are ideal for wildlife photography.

“I wish I’d never gotten into photography,” I wailed at Jared at some point this morning.

I don’t always see the bits I wouldn’t have otherwise seen if I look back at my photos later.

The blog gets random weird bot analytics.

The boys are grown and prefer the company of themselves in their own rooms over spending time out in the main areas of the house.

I feel aimless, unanchored.

And always, always, always…I lament not having a job, not having the prestige of a career, not having substantive income of my own both so that I can help support us and also so I could buy the things I want without guilt.

People I know are not always helpful; just yesterday my own mother said, “Caroline, you should just make yourself do it,” when I was lamenting the state of our dirty house that I am unable to keep up with.

As if it were that easy, proving my family has zero clue as I’ve always known.

I am up now. I have had breakfast, or lunch or snack, or whatever: a protein bar, a tiny cup of walnuts, a very small section of brie, and six fruity jellies from Trader Joe’s.

I won’t allow myself my coffee until I’ve had the entirety of my full water bottle first.

And later, it won’t be so bad. My legs won’t feel shaky when I walk.

Jared says the PTSD is like this. I never remember.

I won’t feel as though I will wilt. I will get a shower for the first time in two days.

But for now, I write, because that’s one of the few things I can do in moments like this.

That Time I Thought All Would Be Right With The World

Love is Not Enough

Calming the Ghosts

When It All Spills Over

“I hate my life.”