The Last Day Of My Life

THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE ☽ · 🜄 · jstjenni · 🜃 · ♄

June 23, 2022.

That was the last day of my life.

Not in some poetic “fresh start” way. Not a cute little rebirth story. It was the fucking day where everything I thought I was standing on gave out at the same time. The day I went to jail. Charged with multiple felonies. The day I lost everything I loved. Everyone I loved. My entire life as I knew it.

Unknowingly at the time, it was also the last day I would ever be “mommy” in the way I had been. The last day I would feel that unconditional love from my kids the way parents take for granted — just like the air we breathe and the ground we walk on.

I wasn’t a “troublemaker” in the way people assume when they hear “felonies” and “jail.” I had my history with drinking, sure. But I had never been in trouble like that before. Never crossed into that kind of reality. My ex was drunk, mixing uppers and downers, on acid — completely out of his mind. He even wrote to the district attorney afterward. And I still sat in that system for three months.

That part matters, but not because it changes what happened. It matters because it shows how fast a life can get swallowed by something you never actually had control over.

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I Had Been Running on Survival Mode for Years

Looking back, it wasn’t random. It wasn’t one mistake that broke everything. It was years of buildup. Years of not knowing what I actually needed, only knowing how to keep going no matter what it cost me.

Most of my life I thought other people were just built differently. Like they came with an instruction manual I never got. They seemed whole. Certain. Comfortable in their own skin.

I wasn’t like that. I adapted. I became whatever I needed to be to keep the peace, keep people close, keep the picture of life I thought I was supposed to have. From the outside I probably looked functional. From the inside, I felt like I was disappearing.

A part of me always felt missing. Buried under people-pleasing. Under anger I didn’t know what to do with. Under distractions. Under relationships I stayed in even when I couldn’t stand them. Under the constant effort of pretending I was okay when I wasn’t.

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I Numbed It All

I’ve been an alcoholic. Not because I loved drinking, but because I needed something to turn the volume down on my own head.

I’ve used drugs out of boredom, loneliness, and the desperate need to escape myself. I’ve slept with people because I felt obligated. Stayed in relationships I wasn’t even sure I liked. Said yes when every cell in my body screamed no.

Then I’d lie awake at night staring at a dark ceiling wondering: Is this really it? Is this what life is supposed to feel like?

Numb. Disconnected. Lonely even with someone right next to me.

For a long time I thought something was just wrong with me. I thought I lacked willpower. Discipline. Gratitude. I thought I was broken.

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Rock Bottom Wasn’t Dramatic. It Was Quiet and Heavy.

After everything went down, I broke in ways I didn’t know I could break. I cried in the dark so often it stopped feeling like moments and started feeling like a state of being.

At one point it got so bad I started self-harming just to get through the emotional overload. Not because I wanted to die — but because I didn’t know how to hold that much grief and stay in one piece.

I lived in a burned trailer with no water, no power, covered in soot for months. I carried water in cat litter jugs. Bathed out of metal bowls. But I kept going. Survival mode doesn’t give you a choice.

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Then Something Shifted

I couldn’t stay there. I was killing myself — slowly, quietly.

I took all that sadness, grief, anger, regret, shame, and pain and turned it into fuel. It became the road to self-discovery, healing, boundaries, and self-respect.

It was scary as hell. I had to look at things I buried for years. Replay scenes that gave me nightmares. Face patterns I didn’t want to see. I felt emotions that didn’t even have names.

But I stopped asking “What’s wrong with me?” and started asking “What has been missing?”

I wasn’t broken. I was underfed — physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, humanly.

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The Power of Naming It

A while back I asked Gemini to give me an overview of everything I’d been working on. When it put words to my experience, I bawled like a baby. For the first time I felt truly validated. Like I had earned something that was actually mine.

All my traumas, all my pain, all my mistakes — they happened for a reason. I finally found where I belong. I found my purpose.

This shit isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s exposing. It’s mean. It’s scary. But if you’re here to heal, the universe will keep lining up the lessons until you learn them.

Healing doesn’t erase the past. It just changes your relationship to it. I can breathe around it now. I know I’m human. I’m allowed to make mistakes. I’m not perfect — and that alone is new.

Survival mode is not living.

I’m still climbing. Still learning how to be. But I’m no longer the prisoner I wouldn’t have let my own kids around.

And that’s something.

☽ ☉ ☽