Some days I wake up and feel like my mind and body are running on old wiring. Frayed. Overheated. Ready to spark at the slightest touch. I keep telling myself that resilience changes you, but lately that word feels less like a badge and more like a scar I keep trying to pass off as a strength.

I used to think resilience meant bouncing back. I thought I had proof. Childhood shitstorms. Teenage chaos. The lonely years of figuring it out with no guidebook and no one checking in. I survived it all, so I called myself resilient. It felt true.

Now I’m fifty-three and learning that what I called resilience was really adaptation. I bent when I needed to. I broke when I had to. I carried more than I ever admitted. None of that restored me. It changed me. It shaped me. It gave me stories. It also took things that I will never get back.

And that is the part I never said out loud until now.

The Myth I Carried About Resilience

I grew up believing that if you take a hit and keep moving, you’re strong. That was the bar. Pain was normal. Silence was normal. Swallow it, stand up, move on. Gen X didn’t talk about trauma. We made jokes about it and called that coping.

It took me decades to understand that getting through something is not the same as healing from it.

The Truth That Finally Hit Me

Resilience does not return you to who you were. It makes you someone else entirely. A different version of you. Sometimes stronger. Sometimes thinner in places you didn’t notice until years later.

Recovery is not a rewind button. It is reconstruction. And you never build the same house twice.

A More Honest Example

Forget the cut finger. That was too small for what this really is. Think about the moment you realise you are carrying more emotional weight than your knees can handle. Think about the night you stand in the dark kitchen, hands on the counter, and whisper to yourself that something feels broken and you do not know how to fix it.

Those moments change you. Even if you pretend they didn’t.

You do keep going. But you go forward a little different. A little wiser. A little worn. You remember the moment. Your body remembers it too.

When Resilience Starts To Feel Heavy

This is the part no one talks about. Over time, resilience can feel like erosion. Like every hit takes a thin layer off your edges. You adapt, yes, but adaptation has a cost. And lately I feel that cost in my bones. Some mornings my mind feels like it is sliding out from under me. Some nights my chest feels hollow in a way that scares me.

I am not saying this to dramatize it. I am saying it because resilience is not free. It never was.

Maybe We Are Not All Built The Same

Some people seem born with a natural instinct to stay standing. Others learn it through circumstance, survival, or sheer stubbornness. It is nature and nurture and everything between. But I do not believe anyone is unbreakable. I think some of us simply hide the cracks better.

So What Is Left If Not Restoration

Strength is not about going back. It is about going forward knowing you will never be the same. Resilience is not a return. It is an evolution.

And yes, it hurts to admit that.

But here is the part that gives me hope. The part I refuse to let go of.

The Affirmation I Still Believe

You are allowed to feel broken. You are allowed to struggle. You are allowed to say this is hard without apologizing for it. Resilience does not require perfection. It requires motion. Even the smallest forward step counts.

I might be exhausted. I might be bruised in ways no one sees. I might have days where I question how much is left in the tank.But I do not give up.
Not now.
Not ever.
I am still here.
Still learning.
Still evolving.
Still relentless.