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When Numb Becomes Your Survival Language
“I wish you would open up, Krystina.” I hear it a lot.From family. From friends. From strangers who follow my story online.But what they don’t understand is…this guard I carry wasn’t built…it grew. It grew from everything I’ve survived.It’s not a wall I consciously put up.It’s muscle memory.It’s my default setting.It’s the way I…
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It Wasn’t the Accident That Broke Me
When I tell people what happened to me,I always pause when I see the look on their face. That wide-eyed shock.That “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”The disbelief.The pity. But what they don’t know….what they could never guess….is that the most traumatizing part of my storydidn’t happen in the car.Or the hospital.Or even the…
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The Door Was Big Enough… But I Never Asked to Be Saved
When inspiration hits,shut up and listen. Because sometimes…it doesn’t come soft.It comes like a wave…one you’ve been trying to outrun your whole life. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.Not in water…but in a deep, dark ocean of my own emotions.My own trauma.It wraps around me like seaweed,pulling me down,freezing my heart…or what’s left of…
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Two Years in This Apartment (and a Lifetime in My Mind)
Coming up this April, it’ll be two years since I signed the lease for this apartment.And while I’m glad I took that leap of faith…while I’m proud I trusted myself to finally live again…this place is also filled with ghosts. Not literal ones (thank God),but the kind of ghosts that follow you from trauma…