My underdog-ish Story

I want to tell you a story. Maybe an autobiography.

Can you write your own autobiography before you’ve figured yourself out?

I don’t know. But if you can, this is mine.

And like most things involving me, it’s a bit of a doozy.

I’m writing this for two reasons:

First, because I’ve been trying to get it out of me for years.

Second, because I think it’s finally time.

I posted this on Fetlife first because honestly, a lot of the kink community understands things like neurodivergence, trauma, identity, grief, love, sex, creation, destruction... all the messy human stuff.

Those things have never felt separate to me anyway. They blur together. Always have.

Also, fair warning: there’s going to be a lot of “I, me, my” in this story.

That’s because it’s about me. Tragic, I know.

This also isn’t a hero story. Or a villain story. Or even an antihero story because, frankly, I’m not nearly cool enough for that. It’s a healing story. A story about me at my absolute worst, and how I clawed my way forward anyway.

And before anyone gets too inspired, I’m still working on myself. I’m not standing on a mountain dispensing enlightenment. I still have baggage. I still trip over old wounds sometimes. But compared to who I was at sixteen?

Jesus Christ. We’ve come a long way.

This piece is probably the rawest shadow work I’ve ever done. So if it resonates with you, beautiful. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too; it may simply not be meant for you. But regardless, I wanted to show what being human can really look like: messy, contradictory, painful, absurd, tender… and still worth surviving.

Prequel: Daddy Dearest

I was an abused kid. Also, a weird kid. Not quirky-weird. Not “gifted child” weird. I mean, full-blown “adults arguing about me in the kitchen while I sat under tables collecting bottle caps and staring at dust particles like they held the secrets of the universe” weird.

My biological father was one of those Satanic Panic guys from the late ’80s and early ’90s. Which sounds fake, honestly, but unfortunately for me, it was very real. Was he mentally ill? Oh, tremendously. Catastrophically. Inspirationally, even.

When I was five years old, he tried to kill my mother with a shotgun.

And yes, I was in the house for that.

My mom locked herself in the bathroom while a friend called the police. My brother and I were somewhere else in the house while Daddy Dearest spun himself into prison until I was fourteen.

Which, funnily enough, was not even close to the most emotionally confusing part of the story.

Because afterward, I spent most of my childhood being compared to him.

Not because I was violent. Not because I was cruel... because I was smart. Intense. Emotional. Weird. Adults always seem deeply uncomfortable when little girls are strange in ways they can’t explain.

So eventually, when I was older, I talked to him.

And honestly? He felt awful about what he had done. I am, by nature, a complete sucker for a redemption arc. However, he did not make much of his life, and he had completely derailed it with that one bad decision.

My mother moved us to the States after everything happened because he was trying to find her through private investigators... I think? Regardless, we ran. And I think, in some ways, she never really stopped running after that.

I don’t blame her for it.

I do, however, blame some of her taste in men.

A few of the partners she chose afterward were abusive toward us kids. Not toward her, my biological father had already cornered the market on that particular role.

Towards kids. Ew.

And I became a point of contention.

“That little bitch isn’t right.” “You should get her tested.”

And my mother, exhausted and trying her best “She’s fine.”

And to be fair, I was in active abuse, but I was "fine".

I was also autistic... Turns out both things can be true at once. Could have maybe done with getting a lil testy testy. I didn't learn this until a couple years ago when my brother actually found out he was.

Nobody knew what autism looked like in little girls or high-masking kids back then, unless you were nonverbal or setting fires in a shopping mall. I was just emotional and obsessive and socially strange and weirdly articulate and constantly overwhelmed by things nobody else seemed to notice.

So instead of support, I got criticism, and abuse.

And instead of understanding, I got survival skills.

Which, to be fair, I became very good at.

Chapter 1: Wonder as Survival

My teenage years were mostly spent grieving a childhood I never really had.

Very dramatic. Very emo. Very “if you listened closely enough you could probably hear My Chemical Romance playing faintly in the distance.” I was depressed. Anxious. Self-harming. Angry at the world in that uniquely teenage way where you somehow feel both invincible and already dead.

The scars in old photos? Mine. I put them there. And somewhere around seventeen, I realized I genuinely did not want to die. Which surprised me.

Because I had spent so long hating myself that I hadn’t realized a quieter part of me had still been trying to survive the entire time.

So I did something terrifying: I asked for help.

I went to my family and admitted what was happening. I told them I couldn’t stop hurting myself even though I wanted to stop.

That level of honesty felt harder than any drug withdrawal I would later experience. Harder than heartbreak. Harder than grief. There is something unbelievably vulnerable about looking at people you love and saying:

“I hate myself, and I don’t know how to stop.” But I did.

And slowly, things changed.

Then, around nineteen, I found one of those Law of Attraction books. Now listen... spiritually, psychologically, scientifically? I’m not here to debate the validity of any of it. What mattered was this: It changed the way I looked at life.

Before that, I was all sharp edges. Angry. Cynical. Defensive. A tiny anarchist raccoon hissing at the universe from inside a trench coat. And afterward, something softened. I started looking for wonder. Not delusion. Not toxic positivity. Just… wonder.

The kind children naturally have before the world teaches them embarrassment.

I started treating life like magic again. Small magic. Sunsets. Music. The feeling of dancing badly in your kitchen. Tiny beautiful things.

And honestly?

Wonder saved my life more than once.

Chapter 2: Beat Me Because I Hate Myself

I found kink around nineteen or twenty. Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense.

I had already spent years trying to externalize pain. Kink just looked prettier doing it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I genuinely love BDSM. I think kink can be beautiful, connective, healing, creative, intimate, and transformative.

But when I was younger?

Baby, I was not doing shadow work. I was just emotionally self-destructing with better outfits.

At some point I had to look at myself honestly and admit: “Girl… you don’t even like pain that much.” Turns out I wasn’t actually some hardcore masochist. I was traumatized and trying to turn suffering into something meaningful.

Which is very poetic. And also very unhealthy.

Still, the kink community gave me something important: People. Misfits. Neurodivergent weirdos. Artists. Survivors. Soft-hearted degenerates trying to build meaning out of pain and pleasure and connection.

I found pieces of myself there.

And around twenty-one, I also found love.

Real love.

The terrifying kind.

The kind where your entire nervous system recognizes someone before your brain catches up.

His name was Rabit.

And loving him changed everything.

Chapter 3: The Righteous Problem Era

Rabit and I loved each other in that deeply inconvenient way where two wounded people mistake devotion for stability.

And to be fair, we were devoted.

He was sunshine for people standing in dark places. One of those rare humans who could fit in anywhere while somehow still remaining beautifully strange. Farm boy energy mixed with alleyway philosopher. Soft-hearted menace. The kind of person who’d give someone his last cigarette and then accidentally convince them to cry about their childhood at 3am.

I loved him instantly.

And for a few years, things were beautiful.

I moved to be with him after six months because, respectfully, when you are twenty-one and in love, wisdom sounds a lot like background noise.

My mother tried to warn me: “You should get to know him longer.”

And I, spiritually wearing finger guns: “Mother, please. I have transcended knowing.”

Reader, I had not transcended anything.

We were young. We were traumatized. We were trying our best while carrying enough emotional baggage to sink a medium-sized fishing vessel.

I worked frontline addictions. Which meant every day I showed up for people standing at the edge of themselves. I loved that work. I loved caring for people. I loved being soft in a world that rewarded hardness.

But frontline work changes you. You collect grief in layers.

A client dies. Someone overdoses. Someone relapses. Someone gets housed. Someone loses everything. Someone gets sober. Someone disappears. Someone thanks you for treating them like a human being and suddenly you have to go cry in a supply closet for ten minutes.

You cannot carry that much pain forever without it eventually asking to be acknowledged.

And meanwhile, underneath all of it, my own unresolved trauma was still sitting quietly in the corner sharpening knives.

Then Rabit cheated on me. And listen. That heartbreak hit me like a meteor.

Not just because he slept with someone else, but because his lies shattered the illusion that love alone could save broken people.

But I loved him so much, I stayed. Which is where I entered what I lovingly refer to as my Righteous Problem Era.

I was not nice, and justified it too. I partied constantly. Slept around. Started spiralling. Became loud, reckless, and emotionally chaotic. Not evil. Not malicious. Just hurt and trying to outrun myself at dangerous speeds.

I quit addiction work because I couldn’t emotionally survive it anymore. Then the drugs started getting harder.

And this is the difficult thing about trauma:

Sometimes self-destruction feels empowering while you’re doing it. Especially when you’re good at surviving. Especially when everyone still thinks you’re functional. Especially when you can still laugh and flirt and hold conversations while your life quietly catches fire behind your back.

I got involved with people making terrible choices. Then I started making terrible choices too.

And eventually, because I have a very dramatic relationship with personal growth, I blew my entire life up.

Honestly? It’s kind of my thing.

Chapter 4: Meth, Recovery, and Other Character Development

At some point about a year after starting, I realized I needed to quit meth.

Which sounds like the sort of realization one should ideally have before doing meth, but unfortunately, life does not always respect narrative pacing.

The problem was: I couldn’t get sober while staying where I was.

And I couldn’t stay sober while staying with Rabit. So I did the hardest thing I knew how to do at the time:

I left.

I checked into the psych ward, sobered up hard and fast, and afterward moved back in with my mom. And weirdly enough? I was proud of myself.

Not because I had everything figured out. God no. I was still a complete emotional disaster in many ways. But because somewhere underneath all the chaos, I was still choosing life.

Again. And again. And again.

Sometimes recovery isn’t beautiful. Sometimes it’s ugly and humiliating and smells faintly like hospital sanitizer and shame. But it still counts.

I wasn’t even two months sober before I went back to addiction work. Which, in hindsight, might sound slightly insane. And maybe it was. But helping people gave me purpose. Purpose made me feel anchored. So back I went.

Then one of my favorite clients got stabbed. And I watched her die. Right there.

There are moments in life where your nervous system quietly splits itself into a Before and an After. That was one of mine.

After that, I finally admitted I couldn’t keep doing frontline work forever. Nobody can. Not really. It eats people alive slowly, even when they love it.

So I went back to school instead. And I thrived there.

Straight A’s. Top of the class. Productive. Focused. Functional. Which is funny because externally successful people can still be internally hanging together with emotional duct tape and caffeine.

At that point, I genuinely thought I had conquered myself.

I had quit meth cold turkey. I had rebuilt my life. I had survived.

I was basically looking at my own reflection like: “Damn girl. Built different.”

And to be fair? I was.

But survival skills are not the same thing as healing. And eventually, life collected its debt.

Chapter 5: The Year Everything Came Back Up

Rabit and I eventually got back together.

He got sober too. We found each other again like two exhausted people crawling back toward warmth after a storm. And for a year, nearly two years, things felt hopeful. Then he cheated again. Which was… deeply unfortunate for everyone involved.

We separated and not long after, everything I had buried for nearly three decades finally came clawing its way back to the surface.

Not all at once.

Trauma is rarely cinematic like that. It’s slower. Stranger.

First, Rabit’s and I's best friend, our brother... died.

Then I started seeing someone I had known for years. Someone I trusted.

And one night, I froze when I wanted to say no. Now, if both of us had been healthier people emotionally, maybe that situation never would’ve happened. But trauma recognizes trauma sometimes, and damaged people can accidentally hurt each other in ways neither fully understands until afterward.

Still, what happened mattered. Because suddenly every buried thing inside me cracked open all at once. Twenty-eight years of fear. Shame. Hypervigilance. Self-hatred. Grief. All of it surfaced together like my nervous system finally screaming:

“HELLO. WE HAVE SOME UNRESOLVED ITEMS.”

Which, frankly, rude.

I completely lost my footing after that. I went to therapy and finally got diagnosed with CPTSD. And honestly? The diagnosis felt less like bad news and more like someone finally handing me the instruction manual to my own brain.

Like: “Ohhhh. I’m not fundamentally broken. My nervous system just thinks we’re being hunted for sport.”

Good to know.

Unfortunately, healing is not linear.

Around this time I started seeing another guy. Very bad choice. Deeply arrogant. Cruel in subtle ways that slowly became obvious.

I left after a huge fight.

Then, because apparently I enjoy learning lessons twice... I went back a month later.

Redemption arc addiction strikes again.

At one point during an hours-long argument where I was being cornered emotionally and verbally, I tried to leave. He wouldn’t let the fight end. Wouldn’t let me disengage. Wouldn’t stop pushing.

Eventually, drunk and overwhelmed and operating entirely from survival instincts, I tried to punch him.

Important lesson:

If you are a tiny traumatized woman trying to fistfight a large cruel man during a nervous system meltdown, statistically speaking, you are not about to win that encounter.

I got hurt. Badly enough that something inside me finally snapped awake afterward. You know, after making the police reports and recovering from a concussion.

Something snapped, and in a dramatic movie way. Quietly. I realized I had now punched two people in my life. And I never wanted to become someone who solved pain that way again.

So I stopped.

Or at least, I started trying to stop becoming the version of myself that only knew how to survive through destruction.

Chapter 6: Folk Fest

By this point, I was trying. That’s important to understand.

I wasn’t spiralling because I didn’t care. I was spiralling because I cared desperately and had absolutely no idea how to carry the weight of my own life anymore.

I was in therapy. Actively. Consistently. I was learning grounding techniques and nervous system regulation and all the deeply unsexy realities of trauma recovery.

Healing mostly looks like:

drinking water

crying in parking lots

identifying emotions like a confused Victorian child

and learning that not every uncomfortable feeling means you’re about to die

I was trying so hard. But I was also still partying. And cocaine, as it turns out, is not historically famous for improving anxiety disorders. Who knew. facepalm

I became fragile in a way I hadn’t been since childhood. Not weak... fragile. Big difference. I felt emotionally skinless.

Everything overwhelmed me. Every friendship felt life-or-death. Every conflict felt catastrophic. Every perceived rejection hit my nervous system like a home invasion.

I was exhausting to those around me. I felt like I was insane. Heck, I was exhausting for me!

Not because I was manipulative or malicious, but because I genuinely did not know how to regulate the tidal wave happening inside me.

And still, somehow, I was beginning to stabilize. Slowly. Tiny steps. Rabit was a huge support and was my best friend through this, like always. I had him, and I had several other amazing support systems.

I was getting ready to cut unhealthy people off. Ready to stop partying. Ready to rebuild myself properly.

And then... well... Rabit died.

I got a phone call saying he’d been in an accident. I called hospitals frantically. Nothing. So I drove to his house. And a police officer was standing outside.

I don’t remember much after that moment, honestly. Trauma memory is strange. Some things become crystal clear forever, while other parts dissolve completely.

But I remember this: The world did not feel real anymore. It felt like somebody had quietly removed gravity from existence.

Rabit was gone. Just… gone.

And the worst part about grief is that your body doesn’t understand permanence at first. For weeks afterward, I still caught myself wanting to text him things. Little things. Songs. Jokes. Weird clouds. After a little while, I started writing to him. I might publish those letters someday. Right now I'm at two books, and I still write letters he won't physically read.

It helps.

Love doesn’t disappear when someone dies. It just loses somewhere to go and I already held a lot of grief in my life… but this one melted me.

For a few days, I bottled everything up.

Then, 4 days after his passing, came Folk Fest. An event I don't know if I'll ever attend again because I ruined it for myself and a few other people, too.

Now listen carefully because this is where the story gets ugly. (As if it wasn’t already a mess lol)

I went with friends. I drank.

Then I drank more.

Then more.

And while we were walking back to the cars, a minor argument broke out between people in the group. Barely even serious. Just tired, drunk bickering.

But something inside me snapped.

Not metaphorically.

I mean, my nervous system fully detonated.

I lost it. I've been told that I turned into another person entirely. I screamed at everyone. Punched a fence. Ran to my car. Someone called me trying to calm me down, and I screamed at them, too.

Then they asked me to wait.

And I said: “Okay, I will.” Which was a lie.

I got into my car drunk out of my mind, drove around the block at absolute demon speed, and slammed directly into a parked truck.

On purpose.

That’s the truth.

I wasn’t trying to survive in that moment. I was done.

I remember waking up sideways in my wrecked car thinking I should’ve been dead.

Instead, I had a scratch on my foot. That was it.

And somewhere in my completely shattered brain, I swear I heard Rabit’s voice:

“Oh no, Kitten. Not like this.”

People can debate grief hallucinations, spirituality or shock responses all they want.

I know what I heard.

The police came. I got a DUI. And I got taken to the hospital because I was very obviously not okay. I asked to be admitted to psych because I knew I was a danger to myself. And someone looked at me with heartbreaking kindness and said, “Honey, you’re grieving.”

As if grief and madness aren’t sometimes roommates. I think so.

Chapter 7: Learning How to Stay Alive

After the accident, something in me changed. Not instantly or beautifully. But permanently.

Because there comes a point where you either continue destroying yourself or you finally admit: “This cannot keep happening.”

I was still in therapy, but took even more in.

Not just talking. Not just intellectualizing trauma like a sad little philosophy major trapped in a goth girl’s body.

I started actually feeling things. Which, frankly, was horrible.

I stopped drinking regularly. Stopped touching drugs entirely. Went on antidepressants until I didn't need them anymore. Pulled my life inward until it became small and quiet and manageable.

That saved me.

For a year and some, my world became intentionally tiny. Soft blankets. Tea. Safe friends. Art. Music. Long walks. Crying at birds for some reason.

Grief changes your relationship with beauty. Suddenly, every gentle thing feels holy.

And during that year I realized something important: I wasn’t crazy.

I had spent years secretly terrified that maybe I was fundamentally unstable. Broken beyond repair. Too much. Too emotional. Too intense. Too damaged. But trauma responses are not moral failings. Addiction is not a moral failing. Grief is not a moral failing.

Having a nervous system pushed beyond its limits is not a moral failing.

What I actually was, was someone carrying decades of pain with very poor coping skills and absolutely no idea where to put all of it.

Given the circumstances, I think I survived pretty impressively.

Messily.

But impressively.

I started learning how to soothe myself instead of punish myself.

Started noticing what triggered anxiety instead of bulldozing through it pretending I was invincible.

Started choosing creation over destruction.

Dance instead of drugs.

Ukulele instead of chaos.

Art instead of oblivion.

Tiny choices. Tiny survivals.

That’s what healing actually is most of the time. Not grand revelations. Just repeatedly choosing not to abandon yourself.

Chapter 8: Wonder After Grief

The strangest thing about surviving your own life is realizing one day that you’ve accidentally become hopeful again.

Not naïve. Hopeful.

There’s a difference.

I still carry grief everywhere with me. I think I always will. Grief isn’t something you “get over” when you’ve truly loved someone. It just changes shape over time.

Sometimes it’s heavy. Sometimes it’s tender. Sometimes it’s hearing a song in a grocery store and suddenly needing to stand very still beside the avocados before you emotionally disintegrate in public.

Human beings are humiliatingly fragile creatures.

But despite everything... all the addiction, heartbreak, trauma, death, bad decisions, nervous breakdowns, and absolutely catastrophic coping mechanisms... I’m still here.

Still soft somehow… That surprises me most.

I could’ve become cruel.

I could’ve become cold.

A lot of people do after enough pain.

Instead, I stayed tender. A little feral maybe, but tender.

I still believe in beauty. I still believe people can change. I still love redemption arcs.

I still look at the world with wonder. Real wonder. Childlike wonder. The kind that survived everything that was supposed to destroy it.

That feels like magic.

These days my life is both quieter and louder.

My career is good. I make art. I dance. I laugh easily again. I have healthier relationships with myself and others, even if intimacy still scares me sometimes.

I still have things to work on.

Avoidance. Distrust. Anxiety. The occasional urge to disappear into the woods and become a cryptid.

But if those are the pieces left?

I think I’m doing okay. More than okay, actually. I think I survived. And not everybody does.

So this story isn’t about being a hero. It’s about being human.

Messy. Traumatized. Loving too hard. Falling apart spectacularly sometimes.

But still choosing to stay.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Now, I don’t need your “wow’s.” Honestly, if most people wrote their lives out this plainly, it would probably read just as wild. Human beings are messy little creatures underneath the surface.

But writing this matters to me.

For the healing. For the humour. For the ability to finally look at my own patterns and laugh instead of just bleed through them.

In spite of it all... all the grief, chaos, bad coping mechanisms, questionable decisions, and catastrophic character development... I’m happy, mostly.

Still soft. Still becoming whole. And honestly?

I think that’s pretty fucking beautiful.