The Crash After Courage

Because Apparently That’s a Thing

Day 2 — November 25, 2025

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been hit by a truck made entirely of emotions. The kind that has no license plate and absolutely fled the scene. Not physically heavy. Spiritually heavy. The specific weight you get when grief and relief sit down together for breakfast and no one knows who should speak first.

Yesterday keeps replaying in my head. Not the trauma. My brain has the decency to blur that out. But the courage? That’s on loop. The unbearable, unbelievable moment where I actually told the truth, out loud, like someone who had decided her life mattered again.

I still don’t know how I did it. I still feel it in my bones.

Yesterday I walked out of that building feeling like someone had scooped out all the fear and left room for oxygen. I was emptied and alive. Hollow and full. Some kind of paradox that probably deserves its own Greek myth.

But today? Today is The Crash. The day-after emotional hangover where your bravery taps you on the shoulder like, “Hey gorgeous, just checking in. How’s that nervous system doing?”

Not great! Thanks for asking!

My emotions don’t know where to sit today. They’re basically wandering around like confused houseguests. Pride is on the couch. Terror is pacing in the hallway. Vulnerability is lying face-down on the floor humming ominously. It’s a full house.

But there’s also this other feeling. A small, calm, steady whispering, “You did it. You finally did it.” And that whisper carries its own gravity.

I didn’t do much today. Honestly, I couldn’t. My mind feels like it was pried open yesterday and is now trying to put all the furniture back where it belongs. It’s wild realizing how long I carried all of this alone and how equally wild it feels to not be carrying it alone anymore. The relief is disorienting.

The quiet around me doesn’t feel empty. It feels new. Like my life hit the reset button and forgot to warn me. Maybe that’s the real work of healing? Not the cinematic bravery, not the “I did the hard thing” moment, but the day after. The day where you sit in the echo of your own courage and try to figure out what to do with it. How to live with it. How to let it rearrange you gently.

So I rested. I cried. I let myself unravel a little. I let myself not be a warrior for a day. And, honestly? Not apologizing for that might’ve been the bravest part of today.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Eve.

And something tells me I’m going to need that day differently than I ever have before — not as a holiday, not as an obligation, but as a pause. A recalibration. A moment to remember that surviving myself yesterday came with a cost. But it also came with a beginning.

So I’m letting today be what it is. A crash, a come-down, a quiet reckoning. The bone-deep exhale after choosing myself in a way that changed the architecture of my entire life.

I don’t know where this goes yet.
But I do know this:

Courage doesn’t end when the moment does. It lingers. It rearranges you. It teaches you how to hold the softer parts of yourself without fear of breaking.

And tonight, even in the heaviness, even in the aftermath, I can feel something inside me settling.

Something honest, something new, something quietly undefeated.

Chaos in one hand.
Grace in the other.
And me — learning how to live with both.