I Said Journaling Would Change Your Life. Here’s What I Didn’t Tell You.
A man once took everything I had built in a single Saturday morning text message.
My company. My clients. My four years of work. Even my car. Gone, because I didn’t read the paperwork carefully enough, and because I refused to become his accessory.
This is that story. And it’s also the story of how I rebuilt myself from the inside out, not with therapy, not with legal action, not with revenge, but with a notebook and three months of brutal honesty.
There’s lots of things I could have done better, but before you judge what I’m about to tell you, ask yourself honestly: do you have faults you’d rather not expose? Good. Then keep reading.
Losing My Dreams
It was the spring of 2011 when he became vicious. Why? Because he had realised he wasn’t going to get his way with me; I had not submitted to his requests to become his significant other. A week prior I quite literally ran away when he attempted to raise the subject. I simply didn’t want to even have that conversation.
He called on Saturday morning. Then again at lunchtime. Both times I looked at the phone’s display and refused to answer. Then a message arrived:
“When you wake up on Tuesday, it will all be gone. I’m shutting your company down.”
Say what, now?
I threw on some clothes, and got into the office within twenty minutes. When I pulled the documentation and began reading through it, I realised I should have looked a year ago.
I never owned my company.
The man had placed me as a director but had ultimately registered the company in his law firm’s name. All of it. My work, my connections, my investment, my money, my endless days and regular working evenings. None of it was mine. Everything I had spent four years building was signed in his name, and I was merely listed as a puppet. I had seen the word Director and hadn’t bothered to read further.
I had Sunday and a bank holiday Monday to figure out what to do. One option was perhaps to submit to his demands.
It didn’t even cross my mind.
Instead, I withdrew what I could from my account, dismantled the air conditioning unit and my office furniture, and transferred everything home. I calculated my outstanding invoices so I knew exactly what I was losing. And I cried until I could barely open my eyes.
When Tuesday came, he did exactly what he’d promised. A house deposit’s worth of invoices issued to clients stayed with him. He even had my car towed — it was registered as a company asset.
I was 27 years old and I had lost my company to a man who didn’t get his way. Cliché,
The Couch Dent
The following month I was focused on ensuring the dent in the couch fit my body perfectly. I was a shell of a human — no direction, no clarity, no dreams, no ideas about what came next. I had achieved my dream of being a business owner and I could not believe it had been stolen from me in such a stupid way. Just because I trusted someone with the paperwork.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t pursue legal action, here’ why. I got my evidence and spoke to a prosecutor who had become something of a friend. His words:
“Ultimately, you’ll win this and you’ll get your money back plus interest. But it will take no less than five years and you’re in for hefty legal fees along the way. Meanwhile, you’ll be ripped to shreds — you’re the foreigner and he’s the respected local lawyer.”
I took a week to process that. And I realised I didn’t want to spend five years fighting a court system in a country where I no longer felt safe. So I gave up on Cyprus.
But before I left, I had to rebuild my inner world. My heart and mind were so shattered I couldn’t possibly fit them in a suitcase.
So I did what I know to work. Every single time.
Rebuilding
I journaled. For three months, almost daily. I asked myself the hardest questions. I dug deep and didn’t dress anything in convenient wording. I chose bluntness.
The first month, I destroyed myself. Every piece of me still standing after I’d watched my dreams shatter was crushed so finely that I turned it to sand and let the Mediterranean Sea wash it away.
I blamed myself for being careless with the paperwork. I blamed myself for believing that if I ignored a man’s advances for long enough he would simply lose interest. On both counts, I was guilty.
The second month, things started getting better, and as with everything in life, I swung in the opposite direction. I made decisions too bold and too reckless. I told myself I would never ignore someone’s advances again (and sometimes that genuinely is the only approach), plus I also committed to reading all terms and conditions everywhere for the rest of time. That was a lost cause by design. Have you seen social media’s T&Cs?
I felt like I was making progress. But I was jittery. The decisions looked right but didn’t feel right.
The third month, balance finally arrived. I had identified my own faults and managed to forgive myself for them. I could see clearly what I could have done differently, and I could also see that the outcome would likely have been the same. I was not this man’s first victim. At least I didn’t end up in the psych ward.
Why Journaling — And Not Something Else
If you’ve spoken to someone carrying trauma, you’ll know that it often takes years for people to see how their own actions shaped the events that unfolded. It takes three times as long to shake off the guilt and see the situation for what it truly was; and to stop blaming themselves entirely and find the honest middle ground.
Journaling speeds that process up dramatically.
Having these intense, blunt, consistent conversations with yourself — with the clear intention of finding a way forward rather than just venting — is the most powerful accelerator I know for moving through any experience so completely that you stop calling it a trauma, even when it had every potential to become one.
Living guilt-free about your own destiny is exactly the flex you think it is. It frees you from judgement — society’s and your own.
Three pages. A pen. The truth.
That’s what brought me back from Cyprus with a suitcase, no company, and everything I actually needed to start again.