The Roots How I Got Over Zip -

The first root I had to pull was the root of silence. I called a friend—not to explain everything, but simply to say, “I’m not okay.” To my astonishment, the world did not end. The friend did not recoil. She said, “Tell me more.” That small act of speaking my truth into the open air began to rot the foundation of my isolation.

I did not “get over” my pain in a single, heroic moment. There was no montage of triumphant workouts or tearful reconciliations set to uplifting music. Instead, “getting over” was a slow, unglamorous process of untangling those roots by hand, one knotted fiber at a time. the roots how i got over zip

There is a particular kind of silence that exists just before dawn—not the peaceful silence of a resting world, but the hollow, ringing quiet of a mind that has run out of lies to tell itself. For years, I lived in that silence. My story is not one of a single catastrophic fall, but of a slow, patient sinking into a swamp of my own making. To understand how I got over, you must first understand the roots that held me under: the tangled, stubborn roots of pride, isolation, and the terror of admitting I was lost. The first root I had to pull was the root of silence

I could not.

The second root was pride. I found a therapist, a decision that felt like admitting defeat but turned out to be the most victorious choice I ever made. In that small room with its neutral carpet and box of tissues, I learned that my struggles were not unique flaws but common human experiences. I learned to name my emotions: shame, grief, fear. Naming them did not make them disappear, but it stripped them of their monstrous power. They became weather, not identity. She said, “Tell me more

The third and deepest root was the most difficult to extract: the belief that I had to earn love and safety through perfection. I had to learn, slowly and painfully, to treat myself with the same compassion I would offer a struggling friend. This meant forgiving myself for the job I lost, for the money I wasted, for the relationships I damaged. It meant accepting that healing is not linear—that some days I would feel whole, and other days I would wake up back in the swamp. But now, I knew the way out.