“Fake it till you make it”. I’ve always hated that phrase. I’ve never been very good at faking anything. But that January evening as I was putting on makeup and getting ready to join some friends, it’s the phrase I said to myself repeatedly.
Just hours earlier, I’d woken up with eyes nearly swollen shut from the tears I’d cried in the days before. Though my week had started off great and according to plan, it went off the rails after a set of what I now know was a series of necessary and divine happenings.
That previous Sunday evening, I had sat down to plan my week and was going to try another ADHD hack called time blocking. I had neatly blocked off time for “quiet time”, “sponsor call”, “travel content”, “lunch and nutrition videos”, “more travel content”, “snack and Duolingo”, “workout”, “read/write”, “cook”, and “RELAX”. Rooted in recovery, I was ready to get serious about moving towards this plan of doing something with all the travel content from my epic solo road trip.
The first two days of the week went according to plan. I was busy, focused, and productive, and I was feeling fantastic. But here’s where my plans started to change. As I was walking up a grocery store aisle that Tuesday evening, I looked up and saw a friend. She and I exchanged greetings and then talked about a live music event we had just attended separately the week before. I took a moment to share my experience – which had been a somewhat frustrating one due to the drunk and disorderly patrons seated next to me that night.
As I shared my disappointing experience with my friend, she listened with empathy and then offered me four tickets to a show that Friday night at the same venue. She had a scheduling conflict and wanted to offer me the entire table. I was shocked and thrilled at the unexpected gift!
After we parted ways, I got busy thinking about who I could invite. I went to bed that night looking forward to a fun and frugal evening with friends! (I just had to stop myself from changing “evening” to “Friday”. Say that five times fast: “fun and frugal Friday with friends”!)
The next morning, I woke up in an absolute panic. I had been having the most vivid dream – in which I had relapsed, lied to my sponsor, been cut off by a family member, and had gotten back together with my ex. I woke up wondering if it was all real. It was a nightmare of such epic proportions that all I knew to do was to start praying. I felt like I needed to cleanse myself somehow, so I lit some sage and surrounded myself with smoke and prayers.
I don’t ever want that life again. I don’t even want to dream about it! But I’m reminded of the phrase: “we won’t regret the past, nor will we shut the door on it.” If I don’t remember how bad it was, I run the risk of getting complacent, starting to rely on myself rather than God, becoming self-righteous, and forgetting to think of ways to help others (or demonstrate patience with drunk and disorderly people!).
Processing that dream with a family member revealed some things that disturbed me further. I realized that I had caused problems by speaking about something that wasn’t my place to discuss. If the dream wasn’t disturbing enough, realizing that I had done something hurtful certainly moved that train completely off the rails.
I wondered if I was just going to keep screwing up and keep hurting people. Was all this intense work I’ve been doing on myself in vain? Was I ever going to be my best self? Was I ever going to get it right? I just wanted to curl up and sleep so I didn’t have to think about how hard life is to navigate.
The next day, as I was having another conversation, something shook loose in me. I started to recall a traumatic event that had occurred over 20 years earlier. Every time the memory had come up before, I had played it through as much as I could, piecing together the flashes of fuzzy memories, but I felt shame every time it came up… because in the memories, I could picture myself lying on that apartment floor, barely conscious, but not resisting or saying no. I had told myself during every replay that it must have been my fault. I shouldn’t have trusted them, I shouldn’t have had so much to drink, I should have known better. And as I felt the weight of that shame, I shoved that memory as far down as I could.
Growing up in a legalistic and patriarchal environment, it was commonplace for me to hear criticisms of women who came forward about sexual assault. I heard things like, “She probably wanted it and then felt ashamed afterwards, so she blamed him. Now she’s ruined his life.” “Why would she come forward all these years later if it really happened?” “She just wants attention.” And even, “She’s trying to get a book deal.”
I can promise you that when I sat in my therapist’s office that day, recounting what I could remember, I most certainly didn’t want attention. I felt such deep shame as I didn’t want anyone to imagine what had happened. I wept uncontrollably and just wanted to hide. Thankfully, he met my tears and shame with compassion and helped me to see that my twenty-year-old self – who had grown up extremely sheltered, and who couldn’t have anticipated what happened – certainly didn’t deserve that. He helped me to understand that just because I drank the vodka those guys kept pouring didn’t give them license to treat me like a plaything to be used and discarded.
It’s interesting how we judge our younger selves based on what we know now. I could never look at my younger self with compassion because I saw her through the lens of my current self – one who learned long ago how to “play the game”.
Though I never got noticed by the guys I obsessed over during my teenage years, I got used to getting unwanted and embarrassing attention starting around the age of 13. Though as a girl I’d been a tomboy, once puberty hit, I developed the kind of body that didn’t go unnoticed. By 15, I was in a DDD-cup bra and developing an eating disorder. As my weight yo-yoed, my already fragile self-esteem plummeted.
For several years, I avoided eye contact and wore the baggiest sweatshirts I could find. And then, at age 20, I moved to Nashville, got a breast reduction, and started waiting tables. Finally, not feeling like a freak, I soaked up the attention I received from men and started attaching my value to my desirability. Within months, I had my first sexual experience with a married manager who had shown me special attention. Not long after that, another married manager tried to seduce me after taking me out to a concert and getting me drinks even though I was underage.
As I look back, I realize that I accepted and encouraged mistreatment from men from the beginning. How could I not when I valued myself so little? Over the years, I came to expect crude comments, innuendos, and inappropriate touches, though many times I would ignore them. I almost became numb to it as I came to know it as normal, and I willingly played that game to get what I wanted – whether that was a sense of validation, better tips, or help with things I couldn’t do on my own.
But my twenty-year-old self hadn’t had all those experiences yet. And my therapist helped me to see her in a different way – a way that didn’t allow the blame to be put on her shoulders for something she never expected, asked for or wanted. I left his office a mess and found myself wandering around Pinkerton Park and the streets of Franklin as I just tried to put one foot in front of the other. I felt drained and broken, but I had a dinner date planned with my best friend.
God works in funny ways, because not only is my best friend an all-around amazing person, she’s also a therapist who works with people in recovery. She has always seen my heart and always loved me fiercely, and that is a gift I hope everyone can have in their life. When I hugged her goodbye, I said “I don’t know if I can do this. It’s just too painful.” I’ve battled depression for so long, and having a friend I can always share my deep and despondent thoughts with always reminds me that I have a lifeline when things get too heavy.
That next morning, when I woke up with eyes nearly swollen shut, I didn’t know how I was going to rally for the show that evening. It was a dreary day, and I had no plans to leave the house until that night, but a conversation with a sober sister prompted me to go to a meeting. I’ve learned that I must fight my urge to purposefully isolate when feeling overwhelmed with pain and sadness, so I headed to my home group.
As I walked into the room, I honestly wanted to be anywhere but there. The room was filled with mostly men and quite a few unfamiliar faces that day. I was feeling so fragile, and I wondered how I would be able to share honestly what was going on with me without mentioning what I had just been through in the previous days.
Though sharing isn’t required in any meeting, a newcomers meeting gives people with six months or less of sobriety an opportunity to share what’s going on with them. And since I took a “surrender” chip at the beginning of October – just days after taking my one year sobriety chip – I was included in the group of people expected to share. (I’ll share about resetting my sobriety date in another post.)
I was the first person in line to share, and the pain just came tumbling out of me. I don’t even know what all I said, but I told them how I was hurting and didn’t want to be there. I was an absolute mess, and I wished desperately that I could keep myself together. When it was time for the “old-timers” to share, they had such compassion. And when the meeting ended, people looked at me with tears in their eyes and told me how sorry they were.
And in another turn of divine events, a woman attending the meeting took me aside into a private room after the meeting. She just so “happened” to have worked in the mental health field for twenty years – and specifically with abused women.
As I recounted the story again – in more detail than I’d been able to share in my male therapist’s office – she was able to help me see how I had to tell myself it was my fault in order for my brain to feel like I’d had some sort of control in that situation. She helped me to see that it was something that those guys had in mind before I’d even gotten there, and she also helped me to understand that I may have been drugged (I have only fuzzy flashes of memories and no idea how I got home).
And as I shared with her more of my life story, she helped me to understand why I had always been drawn to abusive men. It felt like a literal lightbulb went off as my perspective of my entire life shifted. I didn’t know if I could process much more. This was not at all what I had planned when I sat and mapped my week out that Sunday night.
Talk about a heavy several days. I went from feeling great on a Tuesday night, to waking up in a panic on a Wednesday morning, to processing a traumatic experience on a Thursday, to finally being able to name that long-held shame-inducing memory as the sexual assault that it was on Friday. I was completely exhausted – emotionally and physically.
BUT! I had plans to see a show with my friends that evening, so I followed my mom’s best advice for when you’re feeling down: wash your hair and put on some makeup and see how much better you feel! I also repeated to myself that phrase I’d heard as a preacher’s kid on so many chaotic Sunday mornings: “fake it till you make it!”
And fake it I tried as I walked into the venue to find my friend and her grandson. Though I had never heard of the band that was performing that night (Billy Droze & Kentucky Blue), I had seen that they were listed as “bluegrass” and anticipated a nice evening of music. As soon as they started playing, I was so glad I was there and happy I could share it with friends.
But then something grabbed me. This man started singing, and my entire being took notice. Something stirred within me as he sang with such soulful conviction. I looked at my friend with raised eyebrows as I was definitely not expecting to hear music that made me feel something at a bluegrass show. Who the heck was this guy?? And then he made one comment that gave me a clue to the reason he sang like he had a lifetime of feelings in that voice: “some of you know my story.” I thought, “I bet he’s in recovery!” (By the way, his name is Gary Nichols, and you should absolutely start listening to him. He’s a soulful singer with a story to tell!)
As I listened, I forgot all the pain of the previous days. I was captivated, moved, and transported. When my friends left a little early, I started joyfully drumming on the table along to the music as I closed my eyes and forgot that there was a room full of people. Now I had become the person who forgot to pay attention to the experience of those around me. I lost myself in the music as my heart felt happy and free.
After the show, I saw a band member packing up and felt compelled to tell him how much I enjoyed the show. He was so very kind, and I started telling him how I’d had a particularly hard few days and the show had turned that around. And then for some reason, I mentioned that I was in recovery. He said, “then I’m sure you believe in the Almighty.” I told him that I absolutely did, and he said something next that blew me away. He shared that before every show, the band prays that the one person who has had a hard week will be able to forget about it for a few hours. I excitedly exclaimed, “That was me! I was that person!”
Healing comes in many forms, and I’m so grateful for the way God lined this one up for me. During a week when I was reliving some deep hurt I’d suffered at the hands of men, I was met with compassion from my male therapist and men in recovery, I was moved by the gift of a man who has turned his own pain into purpose, and I was encouraged by a man who believes in our Almighty Creator.
Though I still carry scars from wounds I didn’t deserve, I’m reminded that God created us all, in His image. There’s nothing any of us can do to make Him love us any more or any less, but it’s up to us to choose what we do with this life we’ve been given. I am choosing to work on becoming the best version of myself, no matter how much pain I must walk through to get there… because I believe that there’s purpose on the other side.
“We’re not keeping secrets, we’re telling them; we’re not hiding things, we’re bringing them out into the open.” – Mark 4:22 (MSG)
Some resources I found helpful:
Better Help: Why do people blame survivors of abuse and trauma?
Treatment for Alcohol Problems: Finding and Getting Help
Recovery is possible. We’re just learning how to walk again.
Leah McCracken 