Chapter 6: Processing by Repressing

Stress will begin to affect your body if it is unprocessed and held onto for too long. Trauma must be processed in order to move forward. I am a living testament to these.

As a 16 year old, I really did not know how to handle all of those big things… Heck, as a 42-year-old, I still don’t know how. I have been talking things through with my therapist, a few close confidants, and myself. I think the most difficult part has been forgiving myself for not understanding… and extending myself some level of grace for dealing with it the only way I knew how.

Avoidance.

All of that: the relationship, the rape[s], the car incident, testifying in court. It was so huge. And it was never spoken about. I didn’t even try to wrap my head around it. I simply wished it would go away.

I don’t remember making a conscious decision to drink in order to forget… I just drank hoping it would go away.

My relationship with alcohol was clearly centered around those events. I felt (idiotically I know) that if I was drunk, there was some level of protection around the real, raw me. I could handle disappointment and disapproval because in my messed up mind, it wasn’t the real me receiving that… it was drunk-me.

I had this reputation as a “lush, spiraling dangerously out of control” for a while. But what that public perception did not see was the private me. I only drank if I was in social settings. I did not drink if I was alone. And around people (albeit there were only a few) that I trusted and felt safe with, I did not feel the need to put that drunk, fake armor on. I was able to be authentically me. Sober me.

The problem was that I struggle so badly with my self-worth. Does [insert anyone] like me? Am I good enough to be friends with [insert anyone]? Can I trust [insert anyone]? Am I worthy of love? Am I worthy of your time? 

I so often felt like the answers were a resounding no. My ‘romantic’ relationships had basically taught me the answer is no.

Unfortunately, this translated also into platonic friendships as well. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the truth to be revealed… that the friendship meant more to me than to you.

I am oddly grateful for hitting my bottom. I have thanked the Lord so often that nothing irreversible happened on my way home that night. I will be eternally grateful to my parents for stepping in and making me clean up. And I will forever love the friend who took me to the meetings, held my hand, and wouldn’t let me go through it alone. That meant more to me than just about anything else in the world.

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