Searching for Me in the Rubble

I’ve lost me.

That’s the sentence that echoes in my chest when the house goes quiet and the exhaustion settles heavy on my bones. Somewhere along this road of caregiving, grief, endless responsibility, and invisible battles, the version of me I once knew has been buried under the weight of it all.

I used to be a woman with laughter ready on my lips. I used to carry dreams like treasures in my pocket — places Tim and I wanted to go, hopes we whispered into the dark, the ordinary beauty of a shared life unfolding at its own steady pace. Now, those dreams feel like artifacts I visit from time to time, relics of another lifetime. What’s left in their place is rubble. And in the rubble, I search for myself.

When Tim’s PNES seizures began, and when the depression deepened, I didn’t even think about how much of myself would be asked to disappear. I stepped into the role of caregiver with love as my only guide. I told myself, This is what marriage means. This is what vows mean. And I do not regret that — not for one second. But the cost is real, and that cost has been me.

Day after day, I wake up and put on the armor. Work is relentless — the yelling, the unkindness, the pressure that never stops pressing. I pay the bills, I hold up the walls of the house, I make sure food is on the table, that the appointments are scheduled, that he is cared for, that the battles for his treatment are fought. My hands are never empty. My heart is never free of worry. And my body is always, always tired.

Somewhere in all of that, I stopped asking myself what I need. I stopped checking in on the woman who still loves beauty, who longs for peace, who once wrote down dreams in the margins of notebooks. I stopped recognizing the face in the mirror — the weary lines, the forced smile, the resilience people admire that feels more like camouflage than truth.

And I’ll be honest: sometimes I’m angry. Not at Tim — never at him. But at this illness, at depression, at seizures that steal pieces of our life together. At the way time keeps moving forward while we’re stuck in a loop of survival. I want my old Tim back. I want the version of me who laughed more than she cried, who woke up excited about something instead of bracing for the next storm.

The hardest part? People don’t see it anymore. In the beginning, they asked. They brought meals, they texted, they offered help. But a year and a half is long enough for them to forget. They have moved on while we are still here, trapped in a story that doesn’t end neatly. No one asks how I am doing, because suffering that lingers makes people uncomfortable. It’s easier for them to assume I’m managing. That silence has taught me how to be invisible, even in my own story.

So yes — I’ve lost me.

But here’s the truth I keep clinging to: lost does not mean gone. Lost means waiting to be found. Somewhere beneath the rubble, beneath the exhaustion and the grief, I am still here. A flicker of hope still lives in me, even if it’s dim. That hope shows up when Tim reaches for my hand, when a moment of laughter sneaks through the heaviness, when I remember that love — messy, painful, enduring love — is still alive in us.

I am learning that finding myself again won’t happen in grand ways. It might begin with the smallest things — giving myself permission to rest without guilt, writing down the tangled ache inside of me, taking ten minutes to step outside and let the sun remind me I am not only a caregiver, but also a woman who is still alive. It means allowing myself to admit that I am weary, worn, and in need of care too. It means remembering that “resilient” is not the same as unbreakable.

Maybe I will never be the exact same “me” I once was. Trauma, illness, and grief change people — they carve valleys into our lives that can’t be erased. But maybe, just maybe, the me I find again will be someone who has walked through fire and still believes in hope. Someone who has learned that strength is not pretending to be fine but allowing herself to be human.

So yes, I’ve lost me. But I am also looking. And that is something. Because if I can cling to even the smallest thread of hope, then one day, piece by piece, I will find her again.