Staying Awake in a Killing World
There was a phrase that pulled me toward recovery when nothing else could.
Create a life you don’t need to escape from.
It felt like oxygen.
It felt like relief.
It felt like a promise that if I did this right, I could finally stop running.
And I don’t want to diminish that. I needed that phrase. It opened the door. It gave my nervous system something to grip when everything in me was fried from chronic stress, burnout, grief, and the low-grade despair of trying to survive inside systems that were never designed for care.
But when I first heard that phrase, I heard it narrowly.
I imagined a life where nothing hurt too much.
A life where discomfort was a sign something had gone wrong.
A life where healing meant calm, ease, spiritual polish, and emotional manageability.
I wanted a life scrubbed of sharp edges.
Seven and a half years into recovery, I can tell you this with honesty and without apology: that vision no longer serves me.
Recovery is not a fixed destination. It is alive. It grows teeth. It grows roots. It asks more of us as we become more capable of telling the truth.
And the truth is this, a life I didn’t need to escape from still didn’t give me permission to rage.
If you don’t want me to escape, stop fucking killing people.
It didn’t tell me what to do with the scream that rises when neighbors are disappeared and unalived by ICE.
It didn’t make space for the fury that burns when white supremacy keeps getting renamed as “order.”
It didn’t teach me to keen and wail and lament over the children separated from their parents and caged under the guise of “safety.”
It didn’t tell me how to live when patriarchy keeps asking women to be palatable, composed, grateful, and quiet in the face of violence.
It didn’t prepare me for the grief of watching fatphobia dress itself up as health while people’s bodies are disciplined into silence.
A life I didn’t need to escape from was a beginning.
It was never the whole truth.
Lately, a different question has been stalking me.
What does it mean to create a life you are proud to die of?
Not a life that feels good all the time.
Not a life optimized for comfort.
Not a life that confuses regulation with suppression.
A life you are proud to die of.
Because a life you are proud to die of makes room for anger that is raw and feral.
It makes room for grief that derails productivity and rearranges priorities.
It makes room for the body’s refusal to normalize cruelty.
A life you are proud to die of includes:
The willingness to feel rage without anesthetizing it.
The courage to stay present when the world is unbearable.
The humility to make mistakes and repair them.
The stamina to keep caring even when caring hurts.
The refusal to be neutral about harm.
The capacity to let heartbreak move through you without turning it inward.
The devotion of resting so you can return, not so you can disappear.
The bravery to say, This is wrong, even when it costs you approval.
The tenderness to hold joy alongside devastation without demanding one cancel the other out.
The audacity to belong to something larger than your own comfort.
Sobriety did not take my anger away. It stripped away the lies I used to tell myself about why I needed to escape it.
Recovery did not make me softer toward injustice. It made me more honest about what I will and will not tolerate.
Healing did not shrink my reactions. It expanded my capacity to stay.
If escape feels tempting, look at what you’re being asked to tolerate.
It means you are alive.
It means your nervous system recognizes harm.
It means your body remembers how you used to cope and is asking for something truer now.
The work is no longer to create a life without pain.
The work is to create a life where you can feel pain, name its source, refuse its normalization, and still choose to stay.
A life where rage names what must change and does not get buried.
A life where grief deepens your love rather than collapsing it.
A life where you show up imperfectly and keep showing up anyway.
A life you are proud to die of.
That pride will not come from serenity.
It will come from being awake.
Keep going.
I love you,
Anne Marie