Who I Am When Nobody Is Around!
I’m Katrina — all the time.
Not in fragments. Not in versions. Just me, through the days and the nights.
I’m consistent in ways that don’t always show. I fall, and I get back up. I smile when I’m crying — not because I’m pretending, but because I’ve learned how to keep moving even when something inside me aches. I carry both at once more easily now.
There’s one thing I know with more certainty than I did a few months ago: I’m not broken. I never was. I’m exactly where I should be, even if this place doesn’t look like what I imagined. And I’m on my way to better days — not in a loud, triumphant way, but steadily, honestly, one decision at a time.
I was once a nurse in many fields. That part of me mattered. It still does. But I’m learning that I don’t have to live inside my past to honor it. Moving forward is not a betrayal of who I was — it’s how life asks to be lived. Now, I’m a writer. And I love it. Writing gives shape to what I’ve survived and language to what I’m still learning. It feels like truth, not escape.
I take medication. It’s a lot, and I don’t minimize that. But it helps me live — and that matters. I no longer measure strength by how much I can endure without help. I measure it by my willingness to accept what allows me to stay here.
I talk to myself sometimes. Not because I’m lonely in the way people imagine, but because I’ve learned to keep my own company. I went into isolation for a while. I had to. For my sake. To listen. To heal without an audience. To become someone quieter, steadier, and more honest than before.
This is who I am when nobody is watching.
Not fixed. Not finished.
But real — and still here.
Learning My Worth
I’m learning my worth, and I’m learning how to be kind to myself at the same time.
For a long time, survival came first. It had to. I learned how to endure, how to keep going, how to stay upright when things felt uncertain. Survival taught me strength, but it didn’t teach me gentleness. That came later.
Now I understand the difference. First, I survived. Now, I’m learning how to accept who I am.
I know this: I deserve peace. I deserve love that is spoken clearly, not implied or withheld. I deserve to date a wonderful man who says he cares about me—and means it. Someone steady. Someone honest. Someone who doesn’t leave me questioning my worth.
I won’t let past trauma define what I allow now. I won’t let the lies or immaturity of others convince me that wanting respect is asking too much. What I’ve lived through does not disqualify me from love—it clarifies what I need.
I am done mistaking doubt for safety and shrinking to make others comfortable.
I am worthy of peace and love—real peace, real love. Not a quiet room filled with uncertainty. Not silence that asks me to guess.
Learning my worth isn’t loud. It shows up in the boundaries I keep, the standards I hold, and the way I choose myself without apology.
I survived, now I’m learning how to live.
A Letter to the Version of Me Doctors
Never Met
Dear Me,
You never sat on the exam table.
No chart carries your name.
You’re the version of me who learned how to sound fine.
You rescheduled appointments not because you didn’t care—but because you were too sick, too tired, too empty to get there. You tried to work. You wanted to work. Then fatigue flattened you, migraines erased days, and nausea turned water into a gamble.
Doctors met effort.
They never met capacity.
They didn’t see you crying in bathroom stalls, hiding scars, locking the door until your face could pass as normal again. They didn’t see the three months you cried every day, quietly, steadily, considering rest in its most dangerous form—until you saw the word live tattooed on your fingers and held onto it like a promise you hadn’t broken yet.
They saw diagnoses.
They didn’t see accumulation.
Migraines. Multiple sclerosis. Narcolepsy. Depression. ADHD. Fatigue. And when that wasn’t enough, throw something else at you. Another label. Another explanation that still didn’t explain you.
They didn’t meet the grief for small losses:
planning without calculating recovery, trusting your body, imagining a future without contingencies.
You haunt yourself with dreams that won’t come true.
Lives that required a different body.
A quieter cost no one tallied.
Doctors never met you—the part of me who softened the truth to make rooms comfortable. The part who knew that “doing better” often meant conserving energy, not healing.
You were never dramatic.
You were accurate.
This letter is for you—the undocumented, unheard, still-standing version of me. The quiet record keeper. The truth beneath the charts.
I see you now.
And I’m still choosing live.