Rising Phoenix: Choosing Myself

Finally Understanding You: A Year of Breaking, Learning, and Beginning Again.

This post is part of an ongoing series written by “Rising Phoenix,” a woman giving an honest account of how she’s learning to rise out of the pain and destruction of betrayal. Read all her posts by clicking the Rising Phoenix link above. To read all her posts chronologically, start with her first post and then click the “Read Rising Phoenix’s Next Post” link that appears at the bottom of each article.

The Year Everything Unraveled

That first year after Discovery Day, everything came undone. The truth arrived in fragments—slow, sharp, and relentless. The kind of truth that doesn’t just shift your reality, but splits you open. What followed wasn’t clarity or closure. It was a collapse.

We were both unraveling in different ways, trapped in patterns we didn’t yet understand—hurting each other, hurting ourselves. Trying to hold together a life without knowing how to truly live inside it. This is a story about betrayal—and what came after. What we learned. What we lost. And how we’re trying, in the most honest, painful, and healing way possible, to begin again.

When I Finally Broke

We had just passed what used to be our anniversary—once a celebration, now a silence we acknowledged without words. D-Day was approaching, the day we’ve only recently started calling our recovery.

It had been a year of stops and starts, more survival than healing. And still, somehow, I was there. Still trying. But I was tired—not the kind sleep could fix, but the kind that lives in your bones. The kind that comes from carrying too much, for too long, alone. 

Emotionally. Mentally. Spiritually. I didn’t just feel broken. I was.

The truth hadn’t come all at once. It trickled in—painful, drop by drop—and each new piece cracked something inside me. Until eventually, I shattered.

My body gave out before my mind could catch up. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t get out of bed. My hair fell out. My body ached. My lungs, throat, and sinuses were constantly infected. I was numb, exhausted, and empty. My body screamed what my voice couldn’t say. My mind—once sharp and stubborn—went silent. I wasn’t just surviving anymore. I was disappearing.

The Turning Point

In those final months leading up to D-Day, I finally had the space to fall apart. I wasn’t just burned out—I was broken. And though I had already been quietly unraveling for months, this was the full collapse.

What I needed wasn’t a break. I needed real, soul-deep rest—the kind that allows healing to begin. I needed time to grieve. To fall apart out loud. To figure out how the hell to get back up.

And after weeks in bed, something shifted. I realized I couldn’t stay frozen here forever—not in this paralysis. So I started small. Getting out of bed. Sitting in stillness. Journaling the things I couldn’t say out loud. I’d done these things before—but not like this. Not with intention. Not with me at the center. This time, it wasn’t coping. It was connecting. Listening. Breathing. Reclaiming. 

I knew what healing could look like—I’d read the books, done the research. But now it was time to trust myself. To act. To choose. To take my power back. Piece by piece. Breath by breath. Choice by choice.

The Moment I Chose to Stay

Eventually, something deeper shifted: I made the decision to stay.

Not to stay stuck in the pain. And not to return to what we were. But to stay in my life—on my terms. To rebuild, not for him, not for appearances, but for me.

In a quiet moment of meditation, I saw the change—not just in myself, but in him. He had started sitting in the discomfort instead of running. Showing up with a kind of presence I hadn’t seen before. And that gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.

I began setting boundaries I once feared would push people away—only to realize they brought me closer to myself. Choosing to stay was never about returning to before. It was about moving forward, clear-eyed and grounded.

It was saying: This is who I am now. This is what I need. And this time, I won’t abandon myself to keep the peace.

When You Finally Turned Inward - The Diagnosis: Not Excuses, But Understanding 

While I was learning how to stay, he began his own unraveling.

Months of therapy—individually, together, as a family—began peeling back layers. What started as concern for our youngest became a reflection of his own patterns. That was the moment he finally looked inward. Not to fix us. Not to deflect guilt. But to truly understand himself.

That’s when things began to make sense.

After deep assessments and countless conversations, the truth came forward: ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder.

These weren’t excuses, and they weren’t explanations for everything. But they were context. They gave shape to what had felt like chaos—years of impulsivity, emotional whiplash, and a constant chase for validation.

ADHD explained the restlessness, the need for novelty, the struggle to regulate. BPD pointed to deeper wounds—abandonment, emotional inconsistency, trauma that long predated me. His story is his to tell. But I now understand his pain didn’t start with me. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was trying to escape himself.

Infidelity Through a New Lens

Yes—we talked about the cheating.

And through the lens of the diagnosis, we began to understand it differently. Not to excuse it. Not to erase its impact. But to understand why.

For someone wired like him, infidelity wasn’t about conquest. It was about relief—dopamine, validation, the temporary high of being wanted. It became a way to self-soothe. A way to outrun shame.

It doesn’t make it okay. But it made it make sense.

And when we understand something, we can begin to change it.

The Hardest Part: Forgiving Me

People ask, “Have you forgiven him?” I have. But that wasn’t the hardest part.

The hardest part was forgiving me—the woman who stayed too long. Who kept shrinking herself to keep the peace. Who tried to carry everything and lost herself along the way.

For him, the hardest part was staying in the aftermath. Not running. Not hiding. Just staying. Owning. Repairing.

And that’s where we found each other again—not in perfect healing, but in shared reckoning.

What Accountability Looks Like Now

Accountability now looks like this: therapy, medication, boundaries, routines.

He pauses before reacting. I speak without fear. He asks, “What do you need?” I answer, “No.”

He sits with discomfort instead of numbing it. I let go of the need to make everything okay.

Learning how to stay. To repair. To rebuild. Not out of obligation. But because we’ve both stopped abandoning ourselves.

What Forgiveness Really Looked Like and How I Came Back to Me

Forgiveness wasn’t soft. It was a phoenix—rising from the fire of everything that burned.

It looked like telling myself: You didn’t cause this. You don’t have to carry it anymore.

It looked like laying down shame, and finally reaching for the woman buried beneath it.

Forgiving myself didn’t erase the past. But it transformed how I saw her—every version of me I had once judged, silenced, or wished away.

She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t naïve. She was surviving.

And now, I honor her. I listen to her. I protect her.

That’s what healing is. Not a finish line. A homecoming.