Chapter 7 – Heartbreak, Healing, and Hidden Battles

February brought therapy sessions heavy with discussions of my mother and brother. I tried to shield my anxiety from my boyfriend, but old memories crept back like flash floods, and I found myself unravelling in private moments. Eventually, I shared extracts from my diary, hoping he might understand the layers of my behavior and the scars I carried.

By March, our five-year anniversary loomed. I tried to read him, gauge the chance of a proposal. Things felt better between us after some emotional restructuring in my life – I’d let go of the weight of Nick, reorganized my contract at work, and found more joy in our interactions. Still, he was hard to read. I even phoned his mother to see if she knew anything – she didn’t.

In the early hours of a restless Friday, I sent him a message about nearly turning thirty and wondering if he was ready to decide our next step. His reaction was anger, not the conversation I had hoped for, and by the next morning, we had a fight and agreed to talk later. But by Sunday, it was over. He told me he had waited for me to grow stronger, happier, more confident – he’d had unrealistic expectations of me from the start.

Heartbreak consumed me. Panic and despair tore through me like waves. I felt my chest literally ripping open from the pain. Suicidal thoughts flitted through my mind, and for a few days, it felt as though my world had ended. I tried to keep busy to outrun my emotions, but the truth hit in quiet moments: my future, as I had imagined it for five years, was gone.

Through the haze, a strange calm emerged. Acceptance slowly replaced panic. I realized that nothing was under my control. That insight became a lifeline – if I couldn’t control the world, I could at least focus on how I responded. Tremors faded, restlessness ebbed, and for the first time in months, I felt a flicker of inner strength. Yet, sadness lingered. The love I had for him remained, tangled with grief and longing, as I wrestled with the sense of never being quite enough.

Work became both refuge and purpose. My role at Cart Horse, initially fulfilling, began to shift after the arrival of a bay horse named Step Up. I attached to him immediately – his gentle eyes, his quiet trust. When his injuries made his euthanasia inevitable, I begged for time to find him a home. Hours later, he was gone. That loss struck me harder than I had anticipated. It sparked a profound questioning of my purpose: I had dedicated myself to saving horses, yet here was a beautiful soul extinguished far too soon. In that moment, the idea of starting a sanctuary took root – a place where horses could live out their lives with dignity, free from the cruel utility of the world.

By mid-year, life shifted again. I moved in with my father, grateful yet unsettled. His temper, the chaos around me, the constant noise – it all exacerbated my OCD and heightened my anxiety. My psychologist referred me to a psychiatrist after recognizing the escalation in my depression. Adjusting medications, withdrawing from Venlor, and confronting the side effects felt like living in a storm inside my own body. Brain zaps, emotional swings, and recurring dreams of silent screaming mirrored the turmoil I carried inside.

By November and December, despair had seeped into every corner of my mind. I questioned love, relationships, the point of life itself. Christmas came and went in a blur of sadness, punctuated by reflections on global suffering and my own perceived inadequacies. Yet even amidst this darkness, I persisted. I didn’t want to give up – too much fear, too much hope clinging to the idea that life could still be meaningful.

Through it all, moments of clarity emerged. I glimpsed the life I could build – one rooted not in others’ expectations, but in purpose and self-determination. The sanctuary became more than a dream; it became a promise to myself and to the horses who had taught me about resilience and dignity.

2014 was a year of unimaginable heartbreak, yet also the year I discovered the depth of my inner strength. It was the year I found the spark that would guide me forward – the founding of the Horse Sanctuary Trust. Even in despair, hope had quietly begun to take root.

If my story has touched you, consider supporting my dream – every bit helps. The horses deserve a future worth fighting for.

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Author Note: The Sanctuary Trust was closed in 2020.

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The first months of 2015 were a relentless storm. Anxiety gripped me like a vice, leaving me drained, frozen, and constantly afraid. Some mornings, I couldn’t even lift myself from the bed. Migraines pulsed through my skull, panic fluttered through my chest, and the weight of every choice I had ever made pressed down on me. By 6:30 a.m., I would already be trembling, convinced that my heart might explode. Work, once a source of purpose, had become unbearable. Deadlines, emails, stressed colleagues – they didn’t just inconvenience me; they immobilized me. I could work with my hands all day, but even opening a laptop was impossible.

“I cry every time I look in the mirror and remember the choices I’ve made along the way,” I wrote in January. “This has been one of the hardest periods in my life… How do I focus on the positive?” The pull toward despair, toward taking my life, grew stronger by the day. Thoughts of the future seemed impossible. Anxiety about whether I could support myself and live independently suffocated me.

Even moments of joy were entwined with fear. Late January brought a music festival, Up The Creek, with friends. I floated lazily on a lilo along the river, but my mind kept returning to my ex, now entwined with someone new. I remembered our own wild celebrations during the 2010 Football World Cup and felt both nostalgia and raw heartbreak. I was captivated and tormented by the sight of them together, until a friend’s nudge and a drink reminded me that moments of happiness, however fleeting, were still possible.

February offered small glimpses of light. A whirlwind trip to Johannesburg with Claudie – horse riding, game drives, exploring cities – gave me laughter and hope, even if I hadn’t found the deep conversations or clarity I had hoped for. Still, the reminder remained: life could surprise me, and perhaps, I could still find joy.

Yet reality struck hard upon my return. Motivation and energy were almost nonexistent. Even basic tasks felt monumental. But fate intervened in the most unlikely way: a Gumtree listing for a cottage on a horse farm in Rondeberg. I phoned immediately – something I would never have managed a few weeks earlier. The owner turned out to be an old family friend. Coincidence? I didn’t believe in them anymore, but something about this felt like destiny. Within days, I had moved into the cottage.

The farm felt like a lifeline, though it wasn’t the pastoral paradise of my dreams. Some mornings, panic would pin me to the couch. I could not leave the house, unable to face the uncertainty of the world outside. I questioned myself constantly: Was I weak? Lazy? Broken? Was it possible to feel traumatized by the outside world? I began to wonder if my struggles were not purely emotional, but something physical, an invisible weight dragging me down.

By March, a pattern emerged. My monthly cycles brought crashes so severe I felt unmoored and powerless. For as long as I could remember, these crashes had defined parts of my life. Exercise, meditation, journaling, gratitude – nothing could fully shield me from the tunnel of despair. Each dip left me questioning my sanity, my worth, my very ability to cope.

Then came a lunch that changed everything. Chatting with my new landlord, Louise, our conversation turned to health. Our symptoms mirrored each other: extreme mood swings, exhaustion, and crushing monthly crashes. She urged me to see a doctor specializing in hormonal imbalances. For the first time in years, a thought flickered in my mind: maybe this wasn’t all in my head. Maybe my body had a reason for these relentless struggles.

April 2015 brought clarity. Blood tests confirmed adrenal fatigue, Hashimoto’s disease, and iron deficiency. My anxiety, my mood swings, my exhaustion – these were not failures of character or will. My body had been fighting against me for years. Relief flooded through me. For the first time, I could separate my worth from my symptoms. I wasn’t broken; I was ill, and there was a path forward.

The path was far from easy. Thyroid medication brought migraines, iodine burned my throat, iron injections blistered my skin. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, I began to feel myself return. Anxiety became manageable. I could leave the house without panic. Motivation returned in small bursts. Each tiny victory – making a phone call, leaving the cottage, accomplishing a task – was a triumph. The farm became both sanctuary and metaphor. Caring for the animals reminded me to care for myself.

Looking back, heartbreak and health struggles were intertwined in ways I hadn’t realized. Every collapse, every panic attack, every tear had led me here – to this cottage, this sanctuary, this fragile but real sense of hope. Life remained chaotic, pain still came in waves, but it was no longer senseless. Each day, small victories reminded me that survival was not only possible, but that healing was within reach.

By August 2015, the days of being trapped in bed were dwindling. Brain fog still lingered, but energy and clarity were returning. I could see the arc of my recovery forming, and with it, a profound gratitude. Life’s chaos had not destroyed me. It had, in strange ways, brought me to this farm, to this diagnosis, to a beginning of understanding and hope.