A Foreigner in My Own Life

Meeting myself as someone new

I expected healing to feel like coming home to myself.

But instead, it felt like waking up in a country where I didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the customs, and couldn’t quite remember how I got there. My old coping strategies had expired like a passport I couldn’t renew, and suddenly I was standing in the middle of my own life, jet-lagged and unsure of how to order coffee. Recovery had changed me - but no one told me that becoming someone new can feel just as disorienting as being lost.

For so long, I operated in the survival state. I knew its language fluently - hypervigilance, numbing, isolation. Shame was the national anthem, and self-sabotage was just how business was conducted. There was a rhythm to it, dysfunctional as it was. And I could dance to that beat blindfolded.

Then I did the work. I sat in the discomfort. I untangled the knots. I learned to pause, to breathe, to choose differently. I crossed a border, emotionally speaking, expecting some sort of ticker-tape parade for my inner transformation. Instead, I ended up feeling like a tourist in my own skin.

Suddenly, I was learning to speak fluent self-respect - and stumbling over every syllable. It was like switching from survival-speak to self-worth, and I barely knew the vocabulary. Recovery had given me a new language for living - but I wasn’t fluent yet. And I found myself speaking in strange, hopeful sentences that didn’t quite feel like mine.

I had to continuously repeat my new emotional accent, that sounded oddly gentle and unfamiliar, with the slow, uncertain cadence of someone reading from a phrasebook. I understood the words, but they didn’t yet live in my bones. They felt borrowed - like I was practicing conversations I wasn’t sure I could pull off in real time.

And don’t get me started on small talk with the “locals” - people who’ve always lived in this land of self-worth and stable nervous systems. Trying to explain your past without sounding unhinged or apologetic is like trying to explain sarcasm to a customs officer: awkward and mildly incriminating.

In this new terrain, I kept reaching for familiar rituals - the emotional equivalent of ordering a Big Mac and French Fries in Paris. Not because I wanted them, but because they were safe. Predictable. Processed.

But here’s the thing: the old me doesn’t live here anymore. She wasn’t deported or exiled - she just… retired. And I miss her sometimes, even if she nearly killed me. She knew how to read the signs in survival mode. She knew how to hustle for invisibility. She was fluent in brokenness.

Now, I’m learning to slow down. To let people meet the me who doesn’t perform for connection. Who doesn’t translate every kindness as a trick. Who doesn’t apologize for existing.

Still, there are days I feel like I’ve moved to a city where everyone seems to know where they’re going, and I’m standing in the middle of a roundabout with a wrinkled map and Google Translate, wondering if “inner peace” is even on this route.

The truth is: this new version of me isn’t as shiny or perfect as I thought she’d be. But she’s real. She stumbles through conversations, second-guesses her worth some days, and still keeps showing up.

Over time, I’ve started to understand the customs. I’ve stopped bracing for disappointment at every corner. I’ve stopped trying to smuggle guilt into every good moment. I’m learning the currency here is presence, not perfection. And honestly? The longer I stay, the more it feels like home.

If you’re in this weird space - post-crisis, post-survival, post-whatever-defined-you-before - I want you to know: it’s okay to feel out of place. It’s okay if joy feels foreign or if calm feels suspicious. You’re not broken; you’re becoming bilingual. You speak the language of survival and you’re learning the dialect of peace.

Just don’t be surprised if you occasionally get lost in translation. You’re not lost. You’re just arriving.

Sign up for my newsletter to get more content like this delivered straight to your inbox! Subscribe  

I'd love to hear from you! Please leave any questions, comments, or insights in the comments section below.