What Lies Beneath

⚠️ Trigger Warning

This post contains references to sexual assault, adult grooming, emotional abuse, dissociation, and psychological distress.

Some descriptions may be distressing for survivors.

Please take care of yourself while reading. Pause, step away, or seek support if needed. You are not required to continue.

started therapy four years ago without realizing I was already standing on the edge of something unnamed. Not a dramatic edge. Not the kind with sirens or shattered glass. A slow one. The kind you drift toward while convincing yourself you’re still on solid ground.

The breaking point didn’t arrive all at once. It took its time.

For the first decade of my early adulthood, my marriage was rocky in the way earthquakes are rocky—long stretches of stillness punctuated by violent shifts. We were both toxic. Not because we wanted to be, but because toxicity was the only language we’d been taught. We came from homes where love and harm shared the same space, where chaos felt familiar and calm felt suspicious.

When we found out we were pregnant with our first child, neither of us was prepared for the gravity of what we were stepping into. We were still children wearing adult skin. We learned together the hard way—through betrayal, reconciliation, regression, and growth. We were unfaithful. We came back together. We learned patience only after learning cruelty. We hurt each other in ways that left bruises both visible and invisible, competing to see who could land the deepest blow when words felt sharper than fists.

Over time, we cultivated trauma together. Layered it. Normalized it. And somehow—against odds that don’t make sense on paper—we evolved. The volatility softened. The violence quieted. Love began to look less like survival and more like choice.

That marriage—everything it held, everything it broke—was not what landed me in therapy.

It was not what fractured my sense of self.

It was not what made reality begin to blur at the edges.

That came later. In a different season. One that arrived quietly.

A relative showed up at our door carrying nothing but loss. His third DUI had stripped him of everything—his job, his house, his car, even his dog. For the sake of this story, I’ll call him Eddie. He needed somewhere to land. We had a spare room. The arrangement was temporary. Or so we believed.

Weeks became months. Months became years. Eddie didn’t arrive loudly—he settled. Like dust. Like humidity. Like something you don’t notice until breathing starts to feel harder.

Without announcement or agreement, he carved a place into our lives that never came with an exit date.

At first, his presence felt helpful—almost stabilizing. He filled gaps without being asked. He remembered schedules before I did. He anticipated needs before they were spoken. Slowly, imperceptibly, the house began to reorganize itself around him. Not structurally. Energetically.

He was always there.

If I walked into the kitchen, Eddie was already leaning against the counter. If I folded laundry, he appeared with a casual comment. If the kids needed something, he was quicker than I was. Quicker than my husband sometimes. It wasn’t threatening. It was seamless. And that was the problem.

The kids adored him. He was the fun uncle, the lightness in heavy moments. He brought laughter into rooms where stress often lived. We all loved him. But more than that—he mattered deeply to my husband. They bonded easily. Sports, projects, beers, jokes. Male companionship filled a space my husband didn’t even know he’d been missing.

I didn’t always love Eddie’s presence. Sometimes I told my husband I missed us. Missed intimacy. Missed quiet. Missed being alone together without another body in the room. But I never thought the dynamic was dangerous.

Not until it was.

Silence became something I mastered without realizing I was practicing. Not intentionally. Instinctively.

The grooming didn’t start with something obvious. It never does. It began as small tests—moments that made my stomach tighten but my mouth stay closed. If you think grooming only happens to children, think again. With a fractured childhood, a low sense of worth, and a lifetime of learning that “no” was negotiable, I was an easy target.

I began second-guessing my own instincts. If Eddie offered to handle something, I felt relief—and then guilt for feeling relieved. If I felt uncomfortable, I told myself I was being dramatic. If a moment felt off, I explained it away before it could fully form.

That’s how grooming works in adulthood.

It doesn’t break doors down.

It rearranges the furniture until you forget where the exits are.

The first time Eddie crossed the line, he was drunk.

My husband was out of town. I was sitting at the table doing my nails, killing time the way tired women do when the house finally goes quiet. Eddie had been at the bar all night. He came in loose and loud, his words spilling over themselves. Compliments landed wrong—too close, too familiar—but I brushed them off as drunken nonsense.

When he stood up, I assumed he was going to bed.

He wasn’t.

Suddenly I was pinned against the wall. His mouth on mine. His tongue where it didn’t belong. My body didn’t fight. It didn’t scream. It didn’t run.

It froze.

Locked. Silent. Obedient in the way trauma teaches you to be. That moment wasn’t confusion—it was recognition. My nervous system knew exactly what to do.

Nothing.

That night wasn’t the end. It was the beginning.

After that, reality didn’t fracture all at once. It thinned.

I moved through days feeling slightly out of sync, like my timing was off by half a second. Sounds felt sharper. Silences felt louder. My thoughts began looping—same questions, same fears, same internal negotiations. I slept, but never rested. Ate, but never tasted. Laughed, but felt hollow underneath it.

I began watching myself from a distance.

There were moments when I questioned whether things were happening the way I remembered them—or if I was remembering them wrong. Eddie would speak, and my chest would tighten before my brain could explain why. Sometimes he felt omnipresent, like his energy lingered even when he wasn’t in the room. Other times, I convinced myself I was imagining everything.

That I was the problem.

That’s where psychosis slipped in—not as chaos, but as erosion.

It wasn’t dramatic delusions or hallucinations. It was mistrust of my own perception. A growing belief that my reactions were exaggerated, my memories unreliable, my instincts dangerous. I began narrating my own life as if I were on trial, constantly cross-examining my thoughts.

Did that really happen?

Was it that bad?

Why can’t you just move on?

By the time I met Gio, I was already living in two overlapping realities.

One where everything looked normal from the outside—functional, intact, manageable.

And another where my inner world felt disorganized, porous, unsafe.

Meeting Gio felt like air after being underwater too long. Her voice slowed my thoughts. Her presence felt steady, grounded, kind. She made me feel like there was a place where I could speak without being swallowed.

What I didn’t realize was that I was already unraveling.

Therapy didn’t break me—it revealed how broken I already was. The place meant to hold me together became the place where everything collapsed. I had already snapped quietly, internally, long before I ever said the word help out loud.

Psychosis doesn’t always announce itself. It isn’t always loud or dangerous or obvious. Sometimes it’s subtle. A whisper. A distortion so gentle it feels like intuition. People inside it rarely know they’re there.

I didn’t.

Psychosis convinced me that this version of reality—the distorted one—was clarity. That my fear was insight. That my silence was wisdom. That the unraveling was necessary.

Eddie existed in both worlds.

So did I.

And somewhere between silence, grooming, and self-doubt, the foundation cracked—not loudly, not visibly—but enough that collapse became inevitable.

Come with me as we unravel how two worlds of delusion collided. How safety and fracture blurred into one another. How the breaking didn’t lead to destruction—but to collapse.

This is the journey into What Lies Beneath.

This is how I went there.

🖤 If You or Someone You Know Needs Support

You are not alone. Help is available—even if you’re unsure what to call your experience.

Sexual Assault Support

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)

📞 24/7 Hotline: 800-656-HOPE (4673) 💬 Online Chat: https://www.rainn.org Confidential support, crisis intervention, and local resources.

Domestic Violence Support

National Domestic Violence Hotline

📞 24/7 Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) 💬 Chat: https://www.thehotline.org 📱 Text: START to 88788 Support for emotional, physical, and psychological abuse.

Mental Health Crisis Support

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (U.S.)

📞 Call or Text 988 💬 Chat: https://988lifeline.org For moments of overwhelming distress, anxiety, or crisis.

If You Are Outside the U.S.

You can find international support resources here:

🌍 https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

A Gentle Reminder

If parts of this story resonate, that doesn’t mean you have to understand everything right now. Naming comes later. Safety comes first. Silence kept many of us alive—but you don’t have to carry it alone anymore.