Don’t waste your suffering

Paranoia defeated me. What started as a headache, followed by severe nausea, turned into relentless panic and anxiety. That spiral somehow became a malignant diagnosis—one that later proved to be false. This all happened over the span from April to August.

The last I remember feeling normal was Easter Sunday 2022. I was hugging my nieces and nephews at church, smiling for a picture. Little did I know, within the next week, my life would completely change and leave me, five years later, with a diagnosis of PTSD.

It wasn’t the sickness that got me. It was the mental breakdown I didn’t even know was possible. I didn’t know a person could literally lose themselves—fall out of their body, dissociate, and still be alive.

It felt like suffocating while fighting for sanity. Anxiety convinces you that you’re never going to be normal again.

I remember looking in the mirror at 98 pounds, ready to give up. I hadn’t left my house. I hadn’t driven my car. I hadn’t stepped into a grocery store for four months. I was out of work and luckily my job covered my time out.

I saw a therapist 3 times a week. And no grounding exercise was bringing me back to earth.

What happened, you ask? I will never fully know. We believe it was mold toxicity. Possibly pesticide poisoning. I had seen a specialist who tested me for mold poisoning and I had all the matching markers. But whatever it was, I was tormented, spiritually, physically, and mentally and it has affected the way I live even today.

Every time I feel like I’m slipping back there when I remember the sensations of dissociation, derealization, or that feeling of “tapping out”—I remind myself of the small wins that changed my life.

One small win can change everything.

I moved in with an elderly friend for four weeks just to gain momentum, still residing at my apartment, but we wanted to test if being out of it helped. At that point, I had stopped showering and brushing my teeth. I had stopped taking care of myself entirely.

Then one day, after finally accepting medication, I had my first real meal. I’ll never forget it. After four months of surviving on protein shakes, my friend made us a frozen dinner of fish sticks and zucchini covered in shredded cheese. I ate the whole thing, and it felt like the greatest accomplishment of my life.

I remember my first cup of coffee after that. I was sitting by a window, drinking from real china, watching birds and small animals move outside, as they were doing what I hadn’t had the energy or courage to do for so long, I sobbed while reading Atlas of the Heart, by Brene Brown.

Don’t underestimate the benefit of little things like china, books, and placement of your chair in a house.

I remember driving my car for the first time again. It was terrifying, but I did it. I drove to meet my sister who was in town at the beach. I panicked when I got there, but I pulled myself out of it. We had lunch and It turned into a pretty normal day.

That was my first full day back out in the world. It was incredibly difficult but I managed one normal full scheduled day.

I remember the first time I did my hair and makeup again. I felt like a teenage girl discovering herself for the first time.

This continued for months—relearning how to do the things I once forgotten.

By August, I returned to work. I had multiple panic attacks, crying in bathroom stalls, but I kept pulling myself together. By December, I started to feel a shift. I wasn’t fully cured, but I had structure again. I had a system in place.

I moved out of my mold-infested apartment and into a home with people I trusted—people who gave me the space to get back on my feet.

A big turning point in my story was when I was presented with a spur of the moment opportunity to go for a ride in a crane, thousands of feet in the air. I’ve never liked heights, not even before everything happened. So why would I do it then?

But I thought about everything I had already come through, and I said, “Why not do this absolutely insane hard thing!”

So I got in. They strapped me in, I felt all the fears of ‘what ifs’ rush in, and I thought, what ifs can’t stop me anymore.

When I reached the top, it congratulated me. I reflected on how I had gone from feeling like I was dying to being that high in the sky, conquering a fear. It was the first time I truly saw growth and meaning from my trial, what I had gone through. It was a spiritual ceremony in the sky for a moment. Around November and December, I began to understand there was purpose in it.

Four years later, I am a completely different person because of it all. I don’t take no for an answer when it comes to fear. I started building my life through small wins—doing things alone, pushing myself beyond what I thought I couldn’t handle.

I’ve gone hiking alone. I’ve done open mic poetry even on a stage at the Dalí Museum in front of hundreds of people—something I never would have seen coming a million years away.

In October 2026, I’m taking all of those small wins and going to Paris by myself, where I’ll be staying with other writers at a residency in the French countryside.

I wrote a book last year called The Diary of an Emo Latina, built entirely out of resilience.

If there’s anything I want you to take from this, it’s “don’t waste your suffering.”

Suffering will happen. And since it’s going to happen, understanding just that, let it pass, and take from it everything you can.

One small win leads to another, and before you know it, those small wins turn into an entirely new life.

As we approach Easter again, I think about where it all began. And I’m grateful for every painful day that shaped me into who I am now. I am still not fully cured and I am not sure if I’ll ever be, but I can tell you I know how to handle PTSD properly, and remember how small wins lead me out of it the first time and how I can always survive over and over again.

I would have never met this version of myself if I hadn’t gone through it. I know now, that I was never truly alone.

Don’t waste your suffering.

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SMALL WINS