This is one of the more difficult posts, and I'm not entirely sure how much to put in here. I still teach public school and my kids and colleagues don't need to know my business anymore than what I've already put on paper. I'm a person in recovery. From what and how bad it got won't be put on my blog until I retire or quit working with kids. This blog is about the consequences of my past. Not the specifics of the hurts, habits and hangups.
I know what it's like to be ruled by temptation and be attached to things and behaviors. I worry for my students who constantly smell of weed (though I'm not against weed for adults), for my students who struggle with food and weight, for my students who are experimenting with hard drugs, and for my students who put themselves in harm's way sexually, and my students who have been harmed sexually through no fault of their own. I hear you. I see you. I love you.
For most of my adult life, I ran around acting the fool: I don't mean just by who or what I put in my body or places or situations that were dangerous. For many years, I crossed paths with some dangerous people, but most of my time I spent with people like me: party boys who were selective about who they'd party with. But when things got darker, I changed out my crowd. I would spend little time with people who actually liked me and more time around some hard people. People so hard that when guys I thought were rough came to hang out, or heard I was hanging with someone, they would pull me aside and say "do you know who is or was in your house or car?" I didn't know, but I honestly didn't care. Addiction would always downplay reality. Temptation would overrule reason.
The result was I had thousands of dollars stolen, jewelry (including my and Russell's wedding bands) stolen, my entire wardrobe from France stolen, guns pulled out while hanging out, a gun put on me, a threat of being tasered by a supposed friend, my house ransacked, people at my door looking for other people, and cops in and out of my house. Through all of that I also had hands put on me (though that only happened three times: the first time I almost lost my mind on the guy who hit me and had him hiding in a corner until friends came and got his ass; I was ready to go to jail. The other time I got out of the house and the guy eventually left, and the other time was because I felt so disrespected that I saw white and I hit him first. Clocked him with my right fist. He got me back good, but it left everyone shocked. I can't "throw hands" but I have a good punch evidently.
Violence. Theft. Transactional relationships. Self-harm.
I was so lost. So, so lost.
Again that wasn't half of it. And all the while people around me saw me withering away physically, seeing me as a poor thing who had his life out of control, a good teacher who could have been amazing but who was not reliable. It wasn't just at work, it was at Quaker meeting too.
I spoke with my trauma therapist today about it all. The multiple times I wondered if I was going to die by my own choices. Is this it? Am I going to do something that will results in my own death by my hands or by the hands of others?
The sweet, young man from Tennessee was becoming jaded, and hard-hearted. I was hanging out with guys who were affiliated with one criminal organization or another. I even met some of their families. Side note: I was so nervous one time I fake called my brother to talk to him. Talking in a way that I thought made me sound tough to those around me. When we left the guy I was with was like "white boy, you tried too hard." I.e. there's code switching and then there's Whatever I Was Doing.
I eventually lost my black and white thinking. And the last thing I was was a snitch. Yep. I had devolved into that sort of thinking. That not all illegal activity is bad; it's just another way of life. Guns are sexy (except when pointed at me). And these guys are my friends (a few were, most weren't). I was even willing to break the law in order to support someone else in their bad decisions. Again, no specifics. Just to know my thinking went down the tubes.
There has been significant space between this life and today, but that doesn't keep flashbacks from my behavior, consequences of my behavior or the behavior of those around me. When a guy was in my car and put a gun on me, I handled it the best way I could. I told him " you picked the wrong one" and after some back and forth he asked if he got out and left if I'd call the cops on him. "I'm no snitch" I said. "I said I wouldn't and I won't." He put his gun back and rode off on his bike.
I'm such a dumb ass. One of my therapists offers me "what would you rather believe about yourself?" I dunno you tell me. Kind of a dumb ass to let someone in your car when you don't know them. Kind of a dumb ass to be out and about when I should be at home. Kind of a dumb ass to do the things I did, to say the things I said, to hang with the people I spent time with. Dumb. Ass.
But that's what active addiction will do. Eat yourself sick. Drink yourself silly. Drug yourself dumb. Sex yourself into a harmful situation. It's all gambling even if not in the way we think about it. Choosing to act out on addictive impulses brings situations that result in trauma.
There are days when I have flashbacks to the past. That gun in my side. That taser pointed at me. My stuff stolen. My house ransacked. Those moments when I thought I wouldn't make it past that single situation or choice. I was constantly wondering if "this was the end." Worse, sometimes I didn't care. When I have flashbacks or vivid memories, something weird happens beyond the adrenaline rush, beyond the gasp that has others around me gasping too and wondering wtf is wrong, looking around to see what I was gasping at. Often I sigh as a way to calm myself down from the thoughts, the memories, the anxiety of remembering, of the trauma. People around me ask if I'm ok. I am, in the present, but my mind is int he past.
I already had complex PTSD from sexual harm and from bullying in school when I was a kid (I was the sissy, the faggot, the queer from first through twelfth grade). I have vivid memories of interactions with people close to me and all the mess in seminary. Those I already had on my list of traumatic experiences. Not all of it led to PTSD but some of it contributed to it.
But starting in 2009 and for many years after, the trauma from acting out and the consequences of acting out left me sometimes jumping at the thought of my shadow. What makes it worse is that the flashbacks are tainted with this false memory of pleasure, of fun, of camaraderie. It's all a lie, really. Few people I spent time with during those years liked me. Not really. Everyone was just using each other for their own ends. And the self-loathing piled onto the hard self-judgment which was more easily remedied by acting out again. And when memories come from times from acting out I would find new ways to act out. It's been a game of wackamole!
(I'm surprised I don't weigh 300 pounds and that I have the health that I do (although I have gained 40 pounds this year. Thanks food!). But as people keep telling me, it may be time to deal with food, but they'll take me chubby over the way I used to be any day).
So there will be times when I'm just sitting there, day dreaming and I'll get a vivid memory of my past and the room around me will look so vivid. I can see colors and shapes more vividly than before. My adrenaline starts rushing. Sometimes I'll start coughing so hard it makes me vomit. This often happens in the morning when I wake up. I don't know the rhyme or reason to it. It's exacerbated if I gorged on food all night long. My trauma therapist helped me to realize it's anxiety. The one real panic attack that I've had started that way -- everything was so vivid I thought someone had put something in my drink (I was at the bar with my boyfriend). We left out of there because I was dizzy and everything was like I was on E or something). Turned out to be a full-blown panic attack. I've not had one that severe since, but I've had them come on and start like that -- but breathing and talking myself down has usually worked. So when I have these flashbacks, it triggers an anxiety response.
So that's the problem. Therapy, 12-steps, Quaker meeting and supportive friends have been the solution. I can't explain how EMDR works. It's controversial, but it has been helping me to see and think about things differently. Being asked to leave seminary, having Russell's parents file a lawsuit against me when he died, almost losing Russell, getting him back and then watching him die of sepsis through negligence, sexual harm, threats of violence, growing up gay, and my past addictive behaviors all haunt me. Somehow, by thinking on these things while watching a dot go across the screen, I've come to a different place on some of these things. I can acknowledge the pain, and through watching this dot go back and forth, my brain just sees things differently.
For example, I was unwell when they asked me to withdraw from seminary. While the process was harmful, these people had no idea what to do with me. I needed to go home and get well (and it would take me years to do so). I was in the wrong place. I needed to be healed of my childhood traumas and deal with all of the self hate before I could ever hope to live up to the calling that they admitted I had. God was calling me to faithfulness, and they saw it, but I had some healing to do first. Before I just saw it as an injustice and focused on the harmful way the school handled things. Yes, there was betrayal and there were lies told in the process, but that didn't hide the truth that I had spiritual gifts that were being drowned out by the spiritual and emotional illness that I had. Somehow in one session, I came to a place of acceptance and understanding I did not have before. That's also what the 12 steps can do.
In 12-step groups, a person doesn't sponsor another person until they have worked all 12 steps and are living a life of recovery. The same is true for ministers and elders (at least in Quakerism). While many are broken in some way, we all need to work a solution into a life of good choices and faithfulness to our higher power. I have a ways to go still on the steps (I've only ever worked up to step 9 --- making amends) and I have a way to go to a life of consistent yielding to the Light.
This isn't a story that has a happy ending beyond that I'm not wrapped up in that shit anymore. It still haunts me but with my two therapists and my sponsor I met in PIR , I am gaining better perspective and learning new skills to cope. While I've been in 12 step programs since April of 2012, while I've had multiple sponsors in multiple programs of recovery, while I've gone to retreats, hospitals and recovery centers, I'm working the steps again. I'm in therapy twice a week every other week and once a week on the other weeks. My life consists mostly of service in my religious society. But I can tell you that while the Inward work is ongoing, while there are times when peace is shaken, there is a solution and a power that surpasses any understanding. And each day I am awake, each day I choose to use the coping skills I've been taught, to say no acting out and yes to being of service or doing something healthy for me, is one more day upon a bunch of days that I've put together.
People who don't know me can't imagine my past. I have my health, I'm pretty even-keeled, my sense of humor is alive, and I make a difference where I work, worship and hopefully with my friends and family. Whereas in the past people believed me to have it mostly together, but in truth I was living a double life, now that is not the case. What you see and experience is me, and I'm learning to come full up in to any situation.
One day I'll be more specific online. But this is all that anyone needs to know. If you're struggling, or have a friend or family member who is struggling with addictions and attachments, with hurts, habits and hang-ups, I get it. But there is a way out. One day at a time.
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