Three Months Later…

It’s been three months since I came home, and you can see the pain in my face — I don’t feel like myself anymore. There’s a massive construction site behind my house, and on the other side is my family’s business. I feel stuck between worlds I no longer want to live in. Every time I leave this house, I end up spending money, and I feel trapped in a cycle I can’t seem to break. None of my relationships feel the same anymore.

The Trump-Iran war was supposed to end fast. Instead, it gave me another month in Sri Lanka. It forced me to let go of control and simply wait for the world to calm down. Flights were grounded, and I wasn’t willing to pay four times the normal cost to return to a life in America that I didn’t even want. But eventually, that life was still waiting for me when I finally found a flight through the Middle East.

Since coming home, I’ve struggled through job applications and conversations with recruiters who tell me my career history sounds more like a Netflix series than reality. Maybe that’s the next chapter: writing. But first, I need to sell this Toyota Highlander so I can pay my mortgage.

Life has never been fair, and I never expected it to be. What I didn’t realize was the emotional damage that comes from spending almost two decades working alongside the men in my family. Real damage takes time—and sometimes physical distance—to understand. Now I’m back here, trying to heal from something I didn’t fully recognize while I was living it.

The truth is, I really lived in Sri Lanka. I’m not living here in America the same way.

Something has to change.

I think it starts with letting go of the company car I could never afford on my actual salary and accepting that chapter is over. The only thing I know for certain is that I will never work with those men—or in the construction industry—again. That Ashley is dead. I laid her to rest in the Indian Ocean.

Now I need a bridge job. Something that gets me out of my head and out of this house. Maybe something connected to the gem trade here in America. I fell in love with the gemstones of Sri Lanka, and I know my path forward is Venus energy now, not Mars.

I also took a week off social media and realized adashofashg is over, too. But I’m not ready to let go of Ashley Graham just yet.

Some days are easier than others, and I don’t understand why. One morning I wake up at 6:20 a.m. relieved that I don’t have to rush to a desk anymore. The next morning I’m crying, furious with myself for believing the stories my father told me for so many years.

If this experience has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t have many people in my corner—and that’s okay. I don’t need many people. I need to learn how to stand on my own. That’s what I’m doing now, one day at a time, by my damn self.

What’s wild is that I’ve now been home for the same amount of time I spent in Sri Lanka. Three-month chapters, one after another. Three months before I left. Three months there. Three months back.

And this Saturday is Violet’s fourteenth birthday.

As that third chapter closes, I’m also facing one of the hardest truths of all. Violet and I don’t have the same bond we once did. Something broke when my anger took over, and I’ve been trying my best to repair it ever since. Most days it feels impossible. She seems happier with her dad and stepmom, and that has been one of the real consequences of the last nine months. So much changed. So many people disappeared from her life. And whether I intended it or not, she felt those losses too.

Maybe healing isn’t about getting my old life back.

Maybe it’s about building a new one.