I was fourteen, in ninth grade, when I found myself wishing someone, anyone, would save me. I was the victim of bullying, starting the first month of school, and only ending a month before summer vacation. My whole world was falling apart, and no one was helping me.
I daydreamed about running away. I fantasized about changing school districts. I even started contemplating suicide as a way to save myself. I was desperate to escape the constant torment that even followed me home via the internet and prank phone calls.
I told my parents what was happening. I told administrators at school what was happening. No one did anything to help me. No one ever came along and saved me.
I was sixteen when my dad started working on the road, and my mom started losing control. He was gone for several weeks at a time. My mom didn’t seem to handle it well — suddenly being a single parent to two teenagers, one of whom was suffering from undiagnosed mental health issues.
My mom and I fought constantly. I could never figure out why she was always so mad at me, what was wrong with me, why she seemed to hate me.
I told my dad about it; the fighting, the yelling. He would ask me what I did wrong; what did I do to upset mom again? I finally realized that he wasn’t saving me and stopped bringing it up when he called. I was angry. I stopped wanting to talk to him when he called. I needed him to save me, and he refused.
I was eighteen when I started looking for boyfriends to save me from my home life. I tried to spend as much time with them as possible in order to escape conflict at home. I was so concerned with escaping my mom that I downplayed the amount of emotional and mental abuse that I was enduring in my relationships as well.
I was twenty years old when I was basically living out of my car. I spent the night with the current boyfriend or at a friend’s house, anywhere but home. When I met a new guy and spent all my time with him, it made sense when he suggested I just move in with him. I never even gave it any thought that I was only trading one toxic environment for one that was even worse. I moved into his room in his parent’s house with him, thinking he was saving me.
I was so wrong. I wasn’t being saved at all. I was being yelled at and fought with, cheated on and lied to. Eventually, he would start to push me around, and yet I still fought to keep the relationship intact because I thought having freedom away from my parent’s house was worth it. I honestly thought for too long that staying was better than moving home again.
I was twenty-five when I allowed an ex-boyfriend to convince me to get back together with him and move fifteen hundred miles away from all I had ever known. He made the idea of moving to Florida with him, escaping the small town hell I lived in, sound like a dream come true. This was it, I thought; he was saving me. I was escaping everything; I was finally being saved.
Oh, how wrong I was, again. I was let down almost immediately upon moving, realizing he, of course, lied. Nothing had changed but the location. He had made me pack up my life and move away, though; I wasn’t about to pack up and make the journey home again. I wasn’t going “give up” and run home to my parents. I became toxic myself. I refused to move out and move home. I was in complete denial of how broken I felt.
I continued to seek someone to save me. I thought for sure I could find someone in this new city to save me from him, from myself. I really needed saving from myself. I was a mess. I was destroying my life. All these years of pain and discouragement started breaking me down. I started drowning my life in alcohol. Alcohol saved me from feeling some of the pain.
I was twenty-nine, back home in New York, and fresh out of another relationship when I finally swore off men for good. I was done. I had made my latest huge mistake of moving in with someone. I was single again, living on my own, and staying that way. All I kept doing was setting myself up for pain and disappointment, anyway.
I was thirty when I finally realized that no one was going to save me from myself. I kept seeing those words everywhere — “no one is coming to save you” — for months, years, even at this point. I never wanted to believe it. I would roll my eyes and keep scrolling. I still had a tiny sliver of hope that someone or something would come along and make my life magically better. I refused to believe that the message was for me, even though I seriously needed to accept it.
I am thirty-two today and I finally accept that I am the only one that is going to do any saving around here. It has taken me fifteen-plus years to accept the cold, hard truth that I am the only one that can make my life happen. I am the only person who can do the work and make the changes. No one can do it for me. Not my parents, not some guy, not a friend. Just me.
Realizing this and doing the work are two completely different, distinct steps. The process of realizing and accepting that you have to do a lot of hard work to get your life where you want it is long; at least for me, it was. I didn’t just have this revelation one day and start living differently the next.
I have been slowly making changes over the last couple of years. They have been slow, gradual steps toward change. Starting the work and making the changes is another long process that just simply doesn’t happen overnight. For me, the first two steps are still intertwined in a way. I find it sometimes difficult still to accept how hard it actually is to change your life.
It is hard to not think this way when people online portray this journey of changing their life as some romantic thirty-second clip they post on Instagram. Their portrayal of changing their life depicts making a few minor changes and then they find peace and happiness. For me, that just isn’t realistic, and it has only discouraged me and made me feel like shit.
The truth behind my journey is a lot of moments of wanting to give up before I even started. I have wanted to give up so many times in the last couple of years; it felt so impossible sometimes that I couldn’t imagine living any other way than forever suffocating under my misery.
The truth behind my journey is taking two steps ahead, only to fall three behind. It’s still having meltdowns and breakdowns three years in. It is still carrying a heavy load of shame and anger that I don’t know how to manage or shake off. The truth behind many real healing journeys is that they are filled with a lot of pain and tears that no one ever sees or hears about.
Which is exactly what can make a healing journey feel so damn lonely. It is what makes it feel like it isn’t even worth it. It is what makes one continue to fantasize about someone or something coming along to save them and make their life all better, no matter how unrealistic they know that is.
I have been dreaming and fantasizing about all the wrong things this whole time. What I should have been dreaming about, imagining, is me saving myself. I should be imagining what my life could look like with the changes that I want to make myself. What I should be fantasizing about is feeling powerful and independent on the other side of this.
Brittany Netzband 