In 2013 my husband who was a police officer stole my children and moved them to the border of a foreign country. We fought for ten years in open court about the children but he always won. I had a severe nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide. They say that grief is like having a scream deep down inside of you and no one else hears  it. It is very much like that only I felt like I was on fire as well and not dying but experiencing all of it 24 hours a day. It took a very long time to be able to say I had made it through the hardest thing in my life. It's hard when your reasons for life are not present but u have to keep going. I've missed out on so many hugs and so much love the giving and receiving over the years. A few years later I got into a relationship that I thought was going to be ok, but as it turned out it was significantly abusive physically and mentally. I fought back and stood trial after being arrested for defending myself. I narrowly escaped death by the end of that relationship with the help of a neighboring county and their crisis and domestic violence employees. I lived in a shelter for a year getting tossed around between different roommates and mental illnesses. Finally I got an apartment and was independent again. All that only to meet a man, that held me hostage for three days and choked me twice almost to passing out. It all happened in my new apartment and the police have since been u able to find that man and he is on Texas most wanted fugitives list still today. I have a lot of simple trauma and a lot of complex trauma. I have a lot of post traumatic stress. I hear voices from the mental breakdown that get worse with stress. I get scared being alone and I lose a lot of sleep at night. I don't trust people and I no longer trust myself to judge people's characters. My children are older and did not want to move back from the border and now instead of them being little and in an after school program in a border town, they are running the roads,wanting to go to nightclubs in a border town. The more trauma you go through the more u feel like you shattered a long time ago and you are just carrying the tiny pieces of yourself around in a little basket. I struggle with getting out of bed, with washi ng my hair , and with a sense of purpose. Friends don't know how much it means to have a ten minute conversation with them on the phone just to have a little laugh and lighten the mood of your life. I live in fight or flight and it's exhausting. Sometimes I use my spoons and can't even get the energy to wash them and start again the next day. I'm dreadful to have a place where people can relate to things I go through.