This week has been one up and down mountainous terrain of emotions.

I’m reminded that even as we heal from trauma, we’re still carrying it in our bodies, in our memories, in our bones. A couple of days ago, I received a notice of collections debt in the main for a personal loan I took out in 2016. My ex and I were living in a manufactured home that was falling apart; the ceiling had caved in in one room and was about to in another, there was black mold everywhere and water stains in the walls of every room, the skylight in the kitchen was leaking, and the roof was basically nonexistent. The owners we were renting from refused to keep up maintenance on the house and wouldn’t reduce our rent so that we could do the work ourselves. It was a nightmare.

We decided to move. My ex wanted to buy a triplex, but he didn’t have enough money saved up for ESCRO to make that happen, so I took out a huge personal loan on the condition that he would be paying it off. We got the triplex. But he didn’t pay off the loan. He made a couple of payments and then stopped, saying that he was trying to negotiate them down to lower amount owed, but he never followed through on this. When we divorced, we agreed that since he was keeping the triplex and I wasn’t trying to gain any access to any of the rent, the personal loan was still his responsibility to pay off. We put this in our divorce paperwork.

But, again, he didn’t follow through. So the debt went to collections and the collections agency contacted me to pay off the debt. My ex was supposed to take care of this, but after a week or so of struggling to make progress, he gave up. Fast forward to this week. I received a notice in the mail that the collections agency was willing to settle the debt for 15% of the total so long as I paid that amount in full that day. This was saving thousands of dollars, so I accepted the offer and made the payment knowing that it meant my ex could stiff me. But I saw this as an investment not only in my own financial freedom, but also my freedom from him. If I didn’t accept the offer and managed to get him to pay off the debt, it would take at least three and a half years to do so, and I didn’t want to be financially tied to him for that amount of time.

I sent him a text letting him know that I had accepted the offer and made the payment. He was exceedingly grateful, since I had saved him a lot of money in doing so, and he then sent me the amount I had paid, plus a little extra for personal gratuity; he said he was thankful I had handled everything so quickly when it wasn’t my responsibility to do so, and the extra was his way of showing gratitude. I felt good about the whole thing, knowing that I was now that much closer to cutting ties with him, and knowing that a huge personal debt had been paid off.

But I can’t have any interactions with my ex without it majorly fucking with me for at least a few days. And since this interaction was positive, I underestimated the amount it would still unsettle me. Moreover, I’ve been having a lot of nightmares lately, most of them involving my ex, so my PTSD has been in overdrive. Last night I broke down over absolutely nothing. My partner was the one who pointed out that interacting with my ex could be causing my distress, and then it was like the lightbulb went on. I cried. My partner held me. He said it was okay to not be okay because there was a lot of trauma there.

I’ve healed a lot over the last year and a half. In July, it will be two years since I left my ex and I am astonished every day that I’m doing as well as I am considering how long I was in such a traumatic and abusive relationship. But, as I’m trying to show in my thesis, trauma is always with us. It might change as time goes on, it might lessen in severity as we make efforts to heal and grow, but our bodies never fully purge it. Studies have shown that emotional abuse causes the same kind of brain damage as physical abuse, meaning it can be just as traumatic as physical violence. I think it’s possible to heal from trauma, but I don’t think it’s possible to ever erase the damage of trauma or its effects on us.

I’ve struggled for years to understand the traumas in my body. I’m a survivor of sexual assault. I’ve had two miscarriages. And I lived ten years in a marriage with the man who sexually assaulted me, and those ten years were filled with neglect, lies, gaslighting, control, manipulation, and verbal criticisms of my body and my emotional sensitivity. But it wasn’t until 2020 that I gave myself permission to call these side effects what I have for years known them to be: PTSD. It’s why I’m on medication. And the meds help a lot.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t still have flashbacks. That I don’t still have nightmares. That I don’t still have anxiety attacks. That I don’t still fall into deep depressive valleys. Because even though I am happier and healthier today than I have been in a long time, I am, by no means, “free” of my trauma. That’s just not how trauma works. And while I will continue to do what I can to keep healing these wounds, I’m also going to stop denying myself the space and acknowledgement I need for what I’ve been through.

Valentine’s Day is coming up. This year, I’m investing more in my current romantic relationship, and I’m investing in myself. I know I’ve written about this a lot, but it’s something I think needs to be said, and said often: I am worthy of love. I am worthy of belonging. I am worthy of giving myself these things and of accepting them from others. I am going to keep being kind to myself and putting myself first. Because I am worthy of healing. And I am worthy of happiness.