Everyday gets a little easier to live with, my nightmares are more spaced out rather than four or six times in a week. I’m not struggling to catch my breath, my head isn’t screaming at me to remember things I don’t want to remember. Maybe I’m a little numb but I think I need to not feel a lot of anything temporarily. I didn’t imagine at 23 years old, I’d be this alone in my life. My family has shrunk considerably, I don’t have friends, and I haven’t spoken to my own sister since January. I think that’s the biggest change in my life, all these months that have passed removing toxic behavior has made me be able to function better. After I relapsed into a deep depression, my sister did everything possible to assure me that anything I was feeling wasn’t validated and any new issues I had I need to get over. My last straw was her telling me I need to tell my therapist to tell me to snap out of. She justified the constant put downs by saying it was supposed to help me get better quicker. That for once nothing was going to be sugar coated. I don’t know when anything I’ve ever been through hasn’t been ugly but okay. For the first time, I can have an emotion and not flinch that I shouldn’t be feeling that way. I don’t have to lie to myself to appease another person. I can have a low day, discuss with myself or my therapist, and know it’s okay for me to feel a certain way. I’m not ashamed of my new triggers even though I don’t want them. After what I went through in the last year of course I’m going to have new issues and that’s okay. I had to remove people that used to mean the world to me out of my life. It’s a longer existence but this is how it has to be while I recover after they tornadoed my life.