Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing

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Eirene: Some of the deepest bonds in our lives aren't built in safety. They're built in crisis, in chaos. In learning how to survive together and when love is shaped inside survival, it can start to look like sacrifice, silence, and self abandonment. This is a story of how I learned that not every bond rooted in pain can grow into peace.

This is Born Tired Where Survival Meets Healing. A podcast for those of us who grew up in survival mode but are ready to heal and speak our truth, I'm Eirene, a cycle breaker learning what peace feels like after years of survival. Every episode is an invitation to rest inside your truth, to feel seen, and to remember. You are never alone. This is what it sounds like when silence finally breaks.

Before we begin, I want to share a gentle reminder. This episode includes stories and reflections about suicide, childhood trauma, and abuse. Please listen in a way that feels [00:01:00] safe for you. If at any point you need to pause or step away, honor that. Your wellbeing matters more than finishing the episode. You are not alone. Take care of yourself while you listen.

Last week we talked about the fear of becoming the very person who hurt you. How breaking cycles begins with facing the parts of yourself you once feared most. But when you start healing those parts, you begin to see the patterns living in the people you love. And sometimes the hardest mirror to face is the one that looks like family.

This week we're stepping into a different kind of love. The kind born from shared survival, because some bonds don't grow from safety. They grow from chaos. From two people learning how to breathe in the same storm. For me, that bond was my sister. Ours was a love that tried to save us, even when it was the very thing keeping us stuck.

I used to think protecting my sister meant saving [00:02:00] her. That if I could be what our mother wasn't, if I could fill the silence she left behind, maybe it would heal both of us. But love that grows out of survival comes with its own kind of exhaustion, the kind that teaches you to give until you disappear. I thought being the strong one meant holding everything together, that if I stayed calm, if I stayed forgiving, if I kept showing up, no matter what, eventually someone would see me, but instead I vanished inside the role.

It took me years to realize that the version of me my sister loved was the one who kept pretending, and the moment I stopped pretending, everything between us changed. Because some bonds are born out of survival and some are broken by truth. This is a story of how I learned the difference and how letting go became the most honest kind of love I could give.

I think I was more of a mother to my sister than our own mother ever was. I used to [00:03:00] sing her lullabies to help her fall asleep, make sure her hair was combed, that her clothes match. My mother never cared about that, even before her first episode. After the schizophrenia, she stopped noticing altogether. So I did what I could to fill the silence she left behind. I helped with homework, kept her looking presentable, made sure she felt seen. I remember convincing my parents to let me take her trick or treating because they weren't gonna take her. She was so excited that night. Her little smile still lives in my memory. I remember the day I told her there was no Santa Claus. We were walking home from school. She was glowing with excitement about Christmas, but I already knew there wouldn't be presents. My father said gifts were a waste of money. Any extra money went to drinking. I blurted out, there's no Santa Claus. Her face fell. I felt awful, but I couldn't let her believe she was a bad kid when she woke up to nothing. I [00:04:00] was always protective of her.

Our parents treated us differently. That was clear, but I never held it against her. I wanted her to have the gentleness I never got. When I left for the Navy, guilt followed me. I knew my father would never hit her. That kind of violence was reserved for me, but I worried about leaving her behind in that house.

I wanted to cut my father off forever, but doing that meant losing contact with her. So I stayed tethered through phone calls and occasional visits that cost me peace, but kept me close.

Years later, when our mother was hospitalized, my sister took charge. At the time I was living in another state. My husband was active duty and we lived wherever he received orders. My sister handled everything, appointments, medications, all of it, while also dealing with my father's drinking. I never asked her to do any of it, but I thanked her anyway because I knew gratitude wouldn't come from [00:05:00] them.

When things got too chaotic with my father, I stepped in where I could. If she didn't want to talk to our father I called him. Every call was a trigger. He saved his cruelest words for me, but I did it anyway thinking I was protecting and helping her.

One day I came across the post on Instagram about the narcissistic family system. How there's usually a scapegoat, a golden child, and an enabler. It stopped me mid scroll. For the first time I had words for what I lived my whole life. It was an aha moment, like someone had taken a picture of my family and put captions underneath it.

I shared the post on my story, not to call anyone out, but because it helped me make sense of years of confusion. It felt like naming the pattern finally gave me permission to step out of it. But when my sister saw it, she got upset. She said she didn't see things that way. , [00:06:00] She said she'd always tried to be good, and I thought, so what does that mean about me? Did I deserve the treatment I received? Because I was bad? That conversation changed something. It was the first time I realized she saw me the way my parents did, as the difficult one. The problem.

Dealing with my mother's medical issues led to more resentment towards me. Resentment, she would later tell me was all in my head. A narrative I surely invented, but she would let it slip out like with a comment. Must be nice you got to leave, while I'm here dealing with this. She's upset I left but not upset at why I had to leave. She blames my reaction, not the reality that I was abused in every way possible. She said I got to make new memories with the family I created ,while she was stuck with the old ones. But staying there had never been an option for me. She could have moved away. She chose not to.

Maybe because every role in that [00:07:00] family depended on mine. And when I stepped out of it, the whole story stopped making sense. She told me she forgave our parents, that she just wanted to make the time they had left on this earth comfortable. Said I'd regret it when they were gone. She spoke about forgiveness while I was still living inside my father's verbal abuse. She thought I was angry, but what I really felt was grief , because I realized we weren't seeing the same family anymore. I was supposed to forgive and let go, to make peace with the very people who broke me, while she got to decide whose pain was acceptable. She can show them grace for their abuse and their neglect, but not to me, not for the ways I was trying to survive it.

I was going through a rough time. My cortisol levels were through the roof. I was breaking out in hives daily, having panic attacks. I didn't share this with her because I thought she had enough on her [00:08:00] plate, but her resentment for me just kept growing.

I think she thought I was living the perfect life, that everything came easily for me. But when I finally did start opening up about the things I had spent most of my life trying to survive, I told her pieces of what had happened to me, the abuse, the fear that still lived in my body, the panic attacks that came out of nowhere.

I wanted her to understand why I couldn't just go home, why the memories there still haunted me. I hadn't been to visit in six years. Even a weekly phone call with my father took me three to four days to recover from, three to four days of my body trying to calm down, to remember it was safe again. If a phone call did that to me, how was I supposed to survive being in the same room? Going back, there wouldn't have been a visit. It would've been a reopening, a reminder of everything I had to bury to [00:09:00] stay functional.

It was also confusing and invalidating because my sister witnessed a lot of the abuse, from my father towards me firsthand. She was there for most of it, and still we ended up holding very different realities. But when I tried to explain that, to help her understand what going home really meant for me instead of feeling closer, I felt her pull away. Like the truth made her uncomfortable. , Like she didn't know what to do with the parts of me that were still in pain.

It was as if the version of me she could handle was the one who smiled through it, not the one still untangling everything that hurt underneath. Our father kept triangulating us, calling her when I wouldn't answer. Then she'd call to tell me everything he said. I asked her to please stop relaying his messages. It kept me trapped in a loop I was trying to escape. She couldn't understand why that mattered. We were living in two different realities.

Eventually my [00:10:00] depression deepened. I became suicidal. I started therapy again. Leaned on my husband, tried to find my way back to myself. I hadn't told my sister right away. She'd been overwhelmed and I didn't wanna add to it. When I finally did tell her, she seemed uncomfortable, almost irritated. The next morning she sent me a long text. It wasn't cruel, but it was cold. The kind that reads like concern, but lands like rejection. She said she was glad I had my husband and my kids, that she couldn't be there for me right now, that she had too much on her plate.

And I did understand maybe too well. That message hit me so hard, not because of what it said, but because of what It confirmed. That my pain was something she couldn't look at. That being close to me meant confronting what we both survived, and she wasn't ready to do that. It made me feel small again, like the little girl trying to [00:11:00] earn love that was always out of reach. It felt like every lullaby I sang for her, every act of protection suddenly didn't matter. I sat there rereading it, feeling the air leave my body, not anger, just grief. The quiet kind that settles in your chest and doesn't move. Because what that message really said between all the lines was that she needed me to go back to pretending that the only version of me she could love was the one that stayed silent about what really happened.

It's kind of crazy 'cause when I told her what I was going through, I was reaching out for help. I know she had a lot going on at that time, but I never in a million years would've thought that she would react to me that way, and I can't imagine a stranger calling me to tell me that they're going through something like this, telling me they're suicidal, and my response being, I can't help you right now. [00:12:00] I can't imagine doing that to a stranger, let alone my sister. And that's something that I personally will never understand or comprehend.

Not long after that, my father called screaming that I needed to apologize to her. That I should know better than to stress her out. He said my husband and I were both going to die, that all my kids would end up with schizophrenia like my mother. It was one of his usual rages, the kind of cruelty I had learned to expect.

Those kind of conversations had become normal with him. But the difference this time was me. I was already at my lowest point, fragile, barely holding myself together. And even though his words weren't new this time, they broke something in me that I couldn't piece back together.

When I let her know what he had said, she said I shouldn't have stressed her out, like I deserved [00:13:00] it. That's when I knew I had to walk away completely. My sister and I were both struggling. I won't share the details of what she was going through. That's her story to tell, not mine, but I will share what my father's reaction revealed about our family system.

When my father found out we were both struggling, his response wasn't concern for both of us. It was to protect her and to turn his anger on me. The blame landed where it always had. In that moment, it became painfully clear how deeply our roles were still intact.

She was still the one who needed protecting, and I was still the one who could be attacked. Even in our pain, the pattern didn't change. She says, I abandoned her, but the truth is to have a relationship with her, I would've had to abandon myself. To pretend that things that happened and were still happening, never did. To keep quiet so her version [00:14:00] of our family could stay intact.

She needed me to keep taking abuse from my father, to not bring it up, to keep surviving it so she wouldn't have to face what that meant about her. Because he wasn't going to change. And deep down she knew that. So the only thing left to control was me. And for years I played my part, even when my body couldn't take it anymore, when the hives covered my skin, when my cortisol was through the roof, when I couldn't function, but still forced myself to smile, to show up, to pretend we were fine.

That's what survival looked like in our family. Silence just as strength. But the truth is I didn't abandon her. I stopped abandoning myself. My role as a scapegoat was carved too deep, even through her eyes. But recognizing that gave me something I never had before choice.

I want no contact to become the mother my children deserve. [00:15:00] The one our mother couldn't be. It broke my heart, but it also freed me because my sister and I were raised to chase love from people who didn't know how to give it. To compete for crumbs of affection from a table that starved us both. We were never enemies. Just two daughters trying to survive the same house in different ways. Sometimes the bravest kind of love is the one that let's go.

Walking away from my sister was one of the hardest things I've ever done because part of me still wanted to protect her the same way I did when we were little. There's a tenderness in that kind of bond, but also a grief, the kind that lingers long after the decision's been made. I used to believe that keeping the peace meant, keeping the connection. That if I could just hold on a little longer, be a little bit more patient, keep explaining myself, maybe things would finally change.

But I've learned that sometimes peace requires distance, and love requires [00:16:00] honesty. Even when the truth breaks, your heart. Letting go was acceptance. Acceptance that I can't make someone else see what they refuse to face. Acceptance that I can't keep carrying what doesn't belong to me. I've learned that protecting my peace doesn't mean I stopped loving her. It means I finally started loving myself because love that cost you your sanity isn't love. It's survival, and I've spent enough of my life in survival.

Healing doesn't always look like reconciliation. Sometimes it's choosing silence over chaos. Sometimes it's choosing peace over guilt. Sometimes it's closing a door you prayed would stay open because you finally understand that your healing isn't something you can do for someone else. It's learning that love doesn't have to mean losing yourself.

That you can grieve what you hoped for and still honor what's true, that walking away doesn't erase the love that once existed. It just makes [00:17:00] room for the kind that won't destroy you. I think about her sometimes, and I still wish her healing, but this time I wish it from a distance. From a place where I can finally breathe from a place where love and peace can exist at the same time.

Because love isn't just about staying. Sometimes it's about knowing when it's time to go and trusting that letting go is its own form of love, too. The truth is, I don't think my sister and I ever really had a chance at building something healthy or whole. We were raised inside the same storm, but we learned to survive it in opposite ways. She learned to keep the peace, to keep her head down, to make herself small enough not to be noticed. And I learned to fight, to question, to speak, to protect.

Neither of us were wrong. We were just doing what we needed to do to stay alive in a house that didn't know how to love us safely. And I think that's what hurts the most, [00:18:00] knowing that the very things that helped us survive as children became the same things that divided us as adults.

Her silence protected her. My voice protected me, but somewhere in between, we lost our way back to each other. There was always love there, but it was a love built in survival mode. A love wrapped in guilt, in duty, and an unspoken resentment. We were both chasing the version of family we wish we had, and neither of us could give it to the other.

I used to carry so much guilt for that, for not being enough, for not trying harder to make her understand me. But now I see that we were both doing the best we could with what we had, with parents who couldn't model closeness and the childhood that taught us love, had conditions.

We were never taught how to be soft with each other, only how to survive each other's pain. And when you grow up inside that kind of environment, sometimes love starts to look like endurance. [00:19:00] Sometimes it looks like keeping secrets. Sometimes it looks like pretending everything's fine just to make it through another day.

I think about that a lot now, how survival rewires love ,how it makes you afraid to be honest. Afraid to need too much. Afraid that being seen will come with consequences. And I see now that my sister and I were both just trying to rewrite the same story from two different pages. She wanted to move on, to make peace with the past by pretending it didn't happen. And I needed to name it ,to speak it, to face it, to finally release it. But those two ways of healing can't exist in the same space, not without hurting each other.

So I've stopped trying to meet her where she's not ready to go, and I've stopped asking her to meet me in places she's not able to see. That's what love looks like now, accepting that we have our own path, our own pace, our own pain to face.

I still hope she [00:20:00] finds peace, even if it never brings us back together, because maybe the most honest form of love is the one that no longer tries to save. But simply, let's go with compassion. We were two daughters born from the same wound. Each trying to stop the bleeding in her own way.

I don't need closure anymore. Not from her, not from anyone. For a long time I thought healing meant getting answers. That if I could just be understood, maybe the pain would finally make sense. But I've learned that peace doesn't always come from understanding. Sometimes it comes from accepting that you may never get the apology, the recognition, or the ending you deserved, and still choosing to move forward anyway.

But now I see that closure isn't something you wait for. Sometimes it's something you give yourself in the quiet decision to stop reopening what keeps you bleeding. I don't need to control how the story ends. I just need to feel free inside my own life.

The story wasn't easy to [00:21:00] tell, but it's one that needed to be spoken out loud because sometimes the healing we need most comes from the words we were once afraid to say. Healing is a quiet return, over and over again, to the parts of yourself that needed safety the most. And the more I honor those parts, the more I realize they were never asking for closure. They were asking for freedom.

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Because this episode touched on suicide and self-harm. I want to leave you with this. If anything came up for you, please reach out for support. You don't have to carry it alone. In the U.S., you can call or text 988 anytime, day or night. For listeners outside the U.S., please check your local crisis hotline.

This episode was written and narrated by Eirene Torres. Audio production by Carlos Torres. Original music composed by Carlos Torres.