I couldn’t have felt more lonely, sat in my first AA meeting in rehab. It was a huge meeting, I sat right at the back, hiding. I’d been to AA before, but I wasn’t ready. This time was different. I’d crawled in after a detox, almost dead from the battering I’d given myself. This time I was there because I had no where else to go, all my options gone. So, I sat up the back and listened to the woman about to share her story, as the opening to the meeting. She was someone I would become very close to, share my 4th step with and confide in, as a mentor or sponsor.
She began sharing, talking about her childhood. As she continued she shared my childhood out to the room. From where I was at that point I may have been the only woman with my history, or so I thought. Shame and fear had led me to believe there was no one who could understand, or have suffered the terrible things I had experienced as a kid. I was a walking bag of secrets, drowning in shame. But this woman shared her secrets out loud to a room of over 40 people, and they were my secrets too. She did it with ease, with her head held high. She was proud of where she came from, what she had survived, she didn’t want to forget. She wanted to show us her truth had been turned into triumph. That she no longer needed to destroy herself with drugs or alcohol over feelings of powerlessness and self hatred. That those emotions which almost killed, could be owned, discussed openly, exploring other ways to live with them. Mostly what she gave me that evening, was showing me she was not dominated by fear anymore. To say this empowered me is an understatement. I was broken with fear, but didn’t know it. Rage, combined with the isolation of the survivor were my defence back then, as they had been throughout my life. Her story touched something in me that had never been touched. The fear of the little child I carried deep inside me. This fear I was never allowed to express or show, it was Never once met with safety. Like a desert, but a desert is kinder. Its landscape shows itself honestly. If she could be this open and honest, this vulnerable in front of all these people, maybe this worked. Perhaps I could learn to do this, and it would work for me. Because I needed a new way, a different way. The old way was over.
But how I asked myself ? How do you go from the old way to this new way of living. Very slowly. With lots and lots of help, meaning you have to ask for such help, something a locked in survivor like me didn’t know how to do, or even considered I was allowed to do. So before I felt I could do this, had to do this, I debated it. Turning it around in my mind over and over. And the more I thought about it, the lonelier I felt. After the meeting I stood outside having a cigarette, my thoughts spinning over and over. The dawning of having to live a completely different way, when I had only known one way, was terrifying. I wanted to run as fast as I could out of rehab. One of the members of staff at the rehab walked past me into the building. The next day she was facilitating the group I was in. She told the other women she had seen me standing there, looking so baffled, so lonely. She confronted me in the group, getting me to share my feelings and thoughts. To open up was like having to learn to talk another language, or perhaps given the neglect of my childhood, learning to talk, from scratch. From the beginning. Ask for help, share how you feel. The work in group that day led to me having to admit, this was my task now. Now words and awareness are fine, doing it was another matter. I had to live it, starting with little steps, just like a child takes. Finding it’s ok to say I’m hurting, I’m struggling. Being given permission from other survivors who had to learn to do this before me, telling me, showing me , this works.
From that meeting I was shown on a gut level I was no longer alone. I will never forget it, it was a spiritual awakening. Nothing I was carrying back then belonged to me. It was the damage, all the shame, rage, grief, fear, indoctrinated into me by the people who abused me. What a heavy load for a small child to carry, believing she could never ask for help with it. Told no one would believe her, if she ever dared, they would kill her. I took that little girl from rehab, which was a great start for her, to counselling, on and on, until she was able to tell everything. All that shame was put back, where it belonged. What I discovered about her was she had a mind that had wanted, no needed to try to live beyond all the suffering. There was imagination. They couldn’t take this. Books, fields , flowers, music. Escape through running in the fields and woods where I lived when I was small. Looking up at the sky, trees, birds. Dreaming of freedom. Living beyond pain with the mind. Then using alcohol, drugs to escape. Straining at the bit. To be free. Then recovery, where I discovered more freedom, when I embodied myself, finally, to feel my child’s stories. I was led by another, shown a path out of the desperate loneliness by a woman brave enough to share her story. She showed me freedom was possible, gave me hope, when I all I felt was fear. When I was broken, thinking I was at the end, another woman’s story saved me. In all the vulnerability I felt that evening in the meeting, I was given the gift of identification with another.
