Sometimes healing does not look like meditation apps, neat routines, or doing everything the “right” way.
Sometimes it looks like sitting on the floor at 11 o’clock at night beside a motorbike with the seat off, staring at a fuse box because your mind will not settle until you know whether it is the battery, the fuse, or just another thing that has fallen onto your shoulders to sort out alone.
Tonight was hard.
I had already spent time riding earlier because I needed to clear my head. Riding has always done that for me. I grew up on the back of a bike. I have ridden on and off for over ten years now.
Almost two years ago, I completed my CBT for the third time. This time, I knew I was not going to let anyone take that part of me away again.
Friends, family, and colleagues could not always understand why I would choose to ride. What they did not realise was that, at that time, I was living through things I could barely articulate. Much of it was happening in silence.
They also did not realise that riding was one of the only things that made my whole body relax.
At the time, I did not understand dissociation. I did not have the words for it. I only knew that I had shut down so hard in order to survive that feeling anything at all had become difficult.
But on a bike, I could feel.
It was never about chasing danger. It was about finding a place where my body finally stopped bracing for it. For a while, the bike was the only place where I was not waiting for the next thing to happen.
I was just there.
Present.
Awake.
Alive.
I drove to Manchester for my test, and one of the instructors that day spoke openly about his own PTSD after serving in the army, and how riding helped him. I heard him then, but I did not fully understand it.
It took me a year.
Now I do.
He had no idea what I was living through. He had no idea that six months later, I would be diagnosed with PTSD too. But his honesty stayed with me. If I ever saw him again, I would want to thank him, because sometimes people say things without realising they have given someone else language for their own survival.
For some people, motorbikes will never make sense. In healthcare especially, there can be blunt assumptions about riders and risk. But the reality is more complicated than that.
Risk is subjective.
People drive cars recklessly every day. People drink. People use drugs. Chronic stress damages bodies quietly over years. Trauma changes the way people react to uncertainty, silence, fear, and pressure.
For me, a few hours on a bike can help calm the stress responses that build up over time.
That matters.
Self-care matters. Feeling free matters. Sometimes freedom is simply a helmet, an engine, and a stretch of road where nobody is asking anything of you for a little while.
When the battery was flat tonight, it threw me more than it probably should have.
Not just because my plans for tomorrow changed, but because it triggered that familiar feeling that everything ultimately falls back onto me. So when a colleague messaged, I sent her a photo of the fuse box I was sat tinkering with, trying to rule out every possibility before the replacement battery arrives in the morning.
Logically, I knew it could wait.
Emotionally, I could not switch off until I had checked everything.
Trauma can do that. When you have spent years anticipating the next crisis, the next escalation, or the next consequence, it changes how you process your own needs.
You stop asking for help.
You stop explaining pain.
You just keep functioning.
My best friend lives miles away, but she always knows when something is wrong because I go quiet. I shut off. I disappear into doing. Into fixing. Into surviving. Into movement.
That was me tonight.
The reality is that there has never really been anyone coming to save me. I learned that a long time ago.
There is no emergency contact for emotional exhaustion. In reality, I do not even have an emergency contact listed anywhere. No obvious person to name. No automatic safety net. No rescue team arriving when life becomes too heavy.
Most of the time, I am the person people call when they need help.
And honestly, I do not resent that.
Caring for others is part of who I am. It is woven into both my personal life and my professional identity. Supporting people matters to me deeply.
But some nights I understand why others want to be in a relationship, and why they need that side of life. Not to be rescued. Not because they are weak. But because steady, practical, human support matters. Someone safe to call. Someone who notices when you go quiet. Someone who understands that even capable people get tired.
For me, that still feels complicated. When you have been through enough, closeness can feel less like comfort and more like risk. But I understand why people still want that connection. It is not about needing to be saved. Sometimes it is simply about not having to carry everything alone.
Social media is full of messages about independence. About not needing anyone. About strength meaning self-sufficiency.
But I do not think most people genuinely want to do life entirely alone.
I think many of us simply adapt to the absence of reliable support. We become resilient because we had no alternative. We become independent because dependence was unsafe. We learn to survive because survival was required.
And eventually people mistake survival for not needing connection.
Tonight reminded me that healing is rarely neat.
Sometimes it is deep conversations and therapy sessions.
Sometimes it is practical problem-solving.
Sometimes it is a fuse box under a motorbike seat at 11PM because your mind needs certainty before it can rest.
Maybe that is why we need to talk more honestly about what coping really looks like. Not the polished version. Not the inspirational quote version. The real version. The late-night, practical, messy, human version.
Because sometimes the people who look the most capable are the ones quietly holding everything together with no emergency contact, no safety net, and no room to fall apart.
And maybe that deserves a little more understanding too.
NAAVoices.com
