Turn It Up Loud Enough to Breathe

It started with one bill.

Just one.

Nothing dramatic on paper. Nothing that should have changed everything. But something about it hit differently than it should have.

And it sent me into a spiral.

A quiet one at first. Then heavier. Then familiar.

That sinking feeling. The shutdown. The sense of everything piling up at once until I couldn’t hold it all in anymore.

Before I knew it, I was back in a place I know too well.

Depression. Isolation. Loud music. Silence from the world.

And that’s when everything else started to surface.

This isn’t a post looking for sympathy, and it certainly isn’t about feeling sorry for myself. I know there are people everywhere struggling right now. People fighting to keep their homes, pay their bills, save their relationships, battle illness, or simply make it through another day.

I know I am not alone.

But today, the weight of everything crashed down on me.

When I look back at my life, I realize how many dreams I gave up. Some were abandoned because I was told I would never be good enough. Some because I convinced myself I couldn’t do it. Most of them were sacrificed because someone else needed me more.

The truth is, this didn’t start with a layoff.

It didn’t start with bills piling up.

It didn’t start with losing insurance.

It started long before that.

I grew up in a home where my parents fought constantly. A home where anger was louder than love. A home where I was called names and made to feel like what I wanted didn’t matter.

I remember being a child and wanting something simple, only to be told I had to understand why someone else needed it more. My brother had a learning disability (ADHD but called learning disability back then), so I was expected to sacrifice my wants because I was the one who was supposed to understand.

And I did.

I always understood.

Maybe too much.

I learned early that my role was to give things up.

To be the one who sacrificed.

To be the one who accepted less.

My father didn’t show love. He showed rage, anger, and criticism. My mother loved unconditionally when I was young, but somewhere along the way things changed. What should have been support became comparison. What should have been encouragement became a quiet competition I never agreed to enter.

I was told my dreams were stupid.

I was told I would never amount to anything.

And when you hear those things long enough, they don’t stay outside of you. They move in. They become part of how you see yourself, even when you don’t realize it.

People thought because of where I grew up that I had everything.

They saw what was visible.

They saw the version I learned to show the world.

What they didn’t see was the kid underneath it all, trying to hold everything together while quietly falling apart.

So I became rebellious in silence.

Not loud.

Not reckless.

Just searching.

Searching for love. For understanding. For something that felt real.

I gave myself completely to people who would stay for as long as they could, because I didn’t yet understand how to stay with myself.

Then, when I was 24, I met the person who would change my life for almost six years.

We were two peas in a pod. I was the female version of him, and he was the male version of me.

For the first time, I felt understood.

He knew the pain. The history. The weight of things that don’t get spoken out loud.

We recognized each other in a way that felt like home.

And for a while, I felt whole.

I felt like I belonged somewhere.

But sometimes two people who mirror each other too closely also mirror the parts of themselves that haven’t healed yet.

Things changed.

Alcohol became part of the story.

A lifestyle formed that I couldn’t live in.

And I had to walk away.

Leaving didn’t just end a relationship.

It brought back everything I had been trying not to feel.

And I became the version of myself I had always known how to be.

Searching again.

Hurting again.

Trying to survive again.

And the cycle repeated.

A lot of that cycle is still repeating now.

Recently, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I stepped away from a job and accepted a layoff knowing it would create financial strain.

But I couldn’t stay in a place where I was made to feel small, disposable, and like my health and wellbeing didn’t matter.

I wasn’t alone in that decision. Others left too, after years of dedication.

Since then, life has been a constant uphill climb.

Applying for jobs and hearing nothing.

Watching bills stack up.

Losing insurance.

Needing medical care I can’t afford.

Being denied Medicaid more than once before finally being approved.

And then, just when I thought I might breathe again, the call came.

An offer to return.

The same environment.

The same toxicity.

The same disregard for what it does to a person physically and mentally.

And suddenly I’m standing between impossible choices.

Say no and risk losing financial support I desperately need.

Say yes and lose medical coverage that I also desperately need.

Return to a place that could make my physical condition worse because the impact on a body and mind doesn’t matter to people who are not living inside it.

People tell me everything will be okay.

And I know they mean it kindly.

But there are moments where “okay” feels far away, not because hope is gone, but because exhaustion is louder than reassurance.

Because they haven’t lived this version of my life.

They haven’t spent decades learning how to survive by sacrificing themselves.

They haven’t had to rebuild themselves over and over again after every loss, every disappointment, every shift in life that demands more than it gives back.

Why did I spend so much of my life putting everyone else first?

Why did I convince myself there would always be a later for me?

There is always supposed to be a “one day.”

One day I’ll focus on myself.

One day I’ll chase my dreams.

One day I’ll feel like I’m not just surviving.

I have four adult children.

One I barely hear from, and that pain is something I can’t fully put into words.

Another lives far away, so time together is rare and precious.

The other two are close, part of my daily life, and still sometimes the hardest part is knowing they don’t see the depth of what’s underneath the surface.

Not because they don’t care.

But because it’s easier to hide pain than to explain it.

So I hide it well.

Behind a laugh.

Behind a smile.

Behind “I’m okay.”

The truth is that most days I am carrying more than I show.

And when it becomes too much, I disappear into the only thing that has never left me.

Music.

I turn it up until it fills the space where everything else becomes too loud.

It doesn’t fix anything.

But it holds it.

It holds me.

It carries what I can’t say out loud.

It understands what I don’t have words for.

And for a little while, I don’t have to be strong.

I don’t have to be everything for everyone.

I can just exist inside the sound.

Maybe that’s why I’m writing this.

Not for sympathy.

Not for answers.

But because somewhere, someone else is sitting in their own version of silence, wondering if anyone else understands what it feels like to be overwhelmed by life that doesn’t stop asking for more than you have to give.

If that’s you, then you’re not alone.

And neither am I.

For now, I’ll keep going the only way I know how.

One day at a time.

One song at a time.

Peace, Love and Loud Music,

Mickey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6ZScBMwmmQ

Never a truer song to what my life was truly like.