But You Can Save Yourself
There’s a moment from my past that still lives in sharp focus. I was standing in the bathroom at Middlewood, still spiralling from the fallout of drug-induced psychosis, still trying to work out what was real and what wasn’t. When I looked in the mirror, I barely recognised the Tracey staring back at me.
It wasn’t just the reflection, the weight loss, the dark bags under my eyes, the angry red rash on my neck. It was something deeper. It was like seeing myself for the first time, without the noise, without the denial, without the armour.
And that’s when it hit me.
No Fucker was coming to save me.
It landed hard. But I’m not going to pretend the realisation stuck immediately. The moment I was discharged, I was sent straight back into the same life, the same environment, the same pain that had broken me in the first place. And whilst something inside me had shifted, nothing around me had. It was as if nothing had happened, except it had. A tiny spark of awareness had been lit, and it refused to go out.
So there I was again, surrounded by people, yet feeling completely alone. Stuck. Lost. Going through the motions while something inside me kept whispering that things had to change. And then, one day, while eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation, the truth hit me all over again. That tiny spark from Middlewood flared back up, and this time I couldn’t ignore it.
I finally found the courage to leave the relationship.
You’d think walking away would be the easy part. A clean break. The obvious solution. But it wasn’t. It was fucking tough. Leaving meant stepping into a life I didn’t recognise, with no safety net and no script to follow. It meant navigating everything on my own terms for the first time in my life.
But here’s the thing, and the only thing that prevented me from going back was: Anything was better than the terms I’d been living with.
Leaving didn’t fix everything, but it cracked the door open. It gave me space to breathe, to think, to feel. And even though I was terrified, even though I had no idea what I was doing, I knew deep down that choosing myself, however messy, was the first real step toward saving myself.
Getting to know me, the real me, the one behind the mirrored reflection
All my life, I’d relied on relationships to make me feel complete. I was like a hamster on a wheel. I didn’t know how to get off, and back then, with no aftercare and no one guiding me, the wheel just kept spinning.
In the early days, anger kept me going. I still felt betrayed by the people I thought loved me. But then I realised that the person I was angriest with was myself, and that’s when self-compassion came into play, instead of beating myself up, I would self-soothe myself mentally and remind myself that back in that moment when I might have fucked up, that I didn’t know any better, but now I did and I had a choice about how I wanted to show up not just for me, but for everyone around me.
Someone told me to trust my intuition, but I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d heard it. I’d spent my whole life relying on other people’s validation, society’s permission, to feel comfortable in my own skin. Then it hit me I’d misplaced my trust in everyone except myself (I wrote more about that here: Losing and Finding Trust in Recovery.)
Change didn’t happen overnight.
The shift from victim to victor wasn’t a single moment; it was a slow, steady act of reclaiming myself. I started to learn to take responsibility for my actions and reactions. I started to learn how to use my pain as fuel instead of a cage.
People around me talked about acceptance, about letting go. But I couldn’t let go of the fact that someone had hurt me. In my head, they needed to suffer like I was suffering. Then it dawned on me: by holding on to the resentment, I was only hurting myself.
Self‑help books became my guides. Not ys a fluffy, “fix your life in five steps” way, but in a way that challenged me to look at parts of myself I’d spent years avoiding. They held up a mirror I couldn’t put down. They pushed me to question the stories I’d been telling myself, the ones I didn’t even realise were running the show.
Slowly, I started to see the limiting beliefs I’d carried for years. Invisible chains. Quiet rules I’d never agreed to but lived by anyway. Beliefs that kept me small, scared, and second‑guessing everything.
And that’s when it hit me: All my life, I hadn’t been living it, I had been running from it and myself.
Running from my pain. Running from my truth. Running from the parts of myself that needed me the most.
Distraction had become my coping mechanism; anything to avoid sitting with the discomfort. It wasn’t comfortable work. But it was honest work. And it was the beginning of me reclaiming myself.
And then came gratitude. Gratitude became a daily anchor, a way to shift my focus from what was missing to what was present. Finding the lesson instead of the bitterness. Reminding myself of abundance, not lack. Seeing my goals while appreciating what I already had.
Learning to make myself a priority – Having a Word With Myself
I was always having a silent word with myself, but when I started to set aside some time to ‘really’ have a word with myself. Instead of just whispering and mulling them over in my head, I began writing them down. A simple act, but an extremely powerful one.
Being able to scan the day ahead and set an intention about how I wanted to show up. Being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings, to figure out the source, to name them, to be able to see them for what they were, just feelings’ and making a choice, a decision about whether or not I was going to carry them around for the rest of the day, like a heavy anchor, holding me back or if I was going to cut them loose.
These practices haven’t magically fixed my life; I still have shit days, but they’ve changed the way I cope with the shit ones.
Journaling has helped me build resilience, presence, and a sense of enoughness I’d never had before, and I genuinely believe that with a little practice and patience, it can do the same for you.
So if you find yourself drifting through life, waiting for someone to rescue you, hear this:
Nobody is coming to save you.
But that’s not a tragedy
That’s your turning point my friend
Love Tracey
#UnapologeticWriter
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