An Irrational Need to Explain Myself. Part 2.

The time I spent in Oregon in 2017 was the most important time in my life. It was the first and hardest step in a long and painful journey of transformation. It was the first brick in the lasting foundation upon which my future will be built. The love that enveloped me there gave me the strength to do what I had to do, what I have done. I will never forget the faces of the people who shared that time with me. Their voices. How it felt to hold their hands and to hold them and to be held. I am not exaggerating when I tell you their unconditional love saved my life. It did in so many ways. I will be forever in love with that place and those people. But it was just Chapter 1 for me. When I left Hazelden after 3 months it felt like the end of something. Like something had been accomplished. I didn't realize how each of our journeys is distinct and has its own path. I looked around and saw all these men who have given me so much and who were going back to lives they had put on hold to course correct. I had no life to go back to. Nothing.

I had a family that never showed up. Up until this point, even though I didn't yet realize, my entire life and behavior was centered around trying to get them to care. In my family the only way to get my needs met was to be very broken. A job I got just to please them that I had absolutely no interest in doing and tbh was pretty much the opposite of anything I'd like to be doing. I want to say that selling expensive shoes to rich Republicans in northern Ozaukee County for someone like me was like the 6th circle of hell but it wasn't. I had some great people working alongside me and some terrible people. I made some good decisions, I made some bad decisions. It just wasn't what I would choose to do. I had a social life that revolved around drinking and drugs and all the fun and terrible stuff that comes along with that. I don't regret it. But I was empty. There was no me to go back to.

My journey lost it's structure. Recovery wasn't enough. It was scary. I felt alone, but I knew in my heart where I was headed. Transformation had begun. Not a re-emergence or a re-awakening but an original event. The destruction of one thing to become another. For me that process began when I came to understand the mental health struggles as the product not of genetics or brain chemistry but of abuse. Something that didn't happen to me, but was done to me. I came to understand all the anxiety, all the self hatred and all the pain as natural, normal and predictable emotional responses to the "parenting" I received. It's a very delicate line to walk between living in the truth and finding strength from the pain and falling into a bottomless pit of blame and rage. Its only possible to navigate because of my sobriety. I have taken responsibility and forgiven myself for the unhealthy coping mechanisms I developed in response to the abuse and the neglect of my childhood. In this recognition is a release of its power. In my speaking out is a healing of the wound. To live in the truth means to stare pain in the face. It means seeing people for who they are and making decisions. I no longer had to pretend it was my fault. I no longer had to pretend abuse was love. I no longer had to pretend at all.