I had nearly hit rock bottom. The only thing that kept my head above water was the fact that I knew I wasn’t myself. I repeatedly said to my friends, “This isn’t who I am. But this is what I’m doing.”
Identity is everything.
You have to know who you are. Once you know who you are, you know when you’re doing things out of character. I spent a year getting deeply rooted and grounded in who I was, in what my identity as a daughter of God was/is. And even when I was acting out in rebellion because of fear, hurt, and pain, I knew it wasn’t who I was. I came to a fork in the road, and I had to go right or left. I had to become a new person and keep going down the path I was on, or I had to take the other direction and be who I knew I was. Neither was easy. I couldn’t see the end of one, but knew the end of the other. And I knew it wasn’t good.
I made the decision to stay sober for a few months. Not because I wanted to, but I needed to detox. I wasn’t an alcoholic. But sometimes it’s just good to step away from things that can cloud your thinking and decision making for a time.
I got back to the gym again.
I signed up for my personal training certification.
I had the hard conversations with people I needed to have them with.
I got back onto a path that was hard, but where I needed to be. I worked hard at getting better at my job. I got refocused. I prayed the whole time for the pain to go away. It didn’t. But it did get easier to deal with.
At the end of November, a member of the squad got married. I went out to Milwaukee for the wedding. There was so much to celebrate. A little over half the squad was together, reunited again. There were a lot of “How are you”s that weekend.
“We get a lot of how-are-you’s in this life and they come in different shades. For me, David’s was real and deep. We were both broken people and we knew it. We were both roller coasters. We both wore our hearts on our sleeve. We both believed big things were possible.” –Jamie Tworkowski, If You Feel Too Much, David McKenna was my friend.
This quote comes to mind when I think about that weekend. Although there was a lot of pain reliving the places I’d been since coming Stateside, it was also where a lot of healing began. I specifically remember Sydney asking me, “Vicks. How are you?” I looked her in the eyes, and I think she knew it would be a hard thing to say. But she listened and she hugged me and she cared so greatly that she gave me a space to be honest. I felt heard. Seen. Known. She’s not only good at making people feel those things, she’s extremely gifted in all of them, and I am eternally grateful that she was the first I talked to that night.
The wedding weekend was the very beginning baby steps to healing the damage I’d allowed to happen. I don’t blame the guy fully for what happened. I will own my part of the mess. I was playing with fire. I was bound to get burned. But thank God that He is who He is. That He’s kind even when we’re rebellious. That we are covered in tons and tons of grace that makes all the load not lighter, but gone.
Syd, if you’re reading this, I love you an immense amount. Even if we never talked again, I would carry the memory of that conversation for the rest of my life. Because it mattered that much. Thank you for who you are and how you care for people. It’s impacted me so greatly.
The following months were surface level healthy, but under the surface was lot of back-and-forth gilt and processing. I didn’t talk to many people about how my life really was. I hit the gym a lot. I worked on getting back into a healthy routine. Nutrition. Fitness. Journaling. It was a weird season. I went completely numb in some ways because I needed to forget about it all for awhile. I needed to just focus on one thing.
The holidays came and went. It felt weird being home again. 2020 really didn’t have a bad start for me. I was back in a healthy routine. God didn’t feel distant, but didn’t feel close, either. I had the start of good community. Health was my main focus, and I think I needed that.
The last blog is coming. It seems so weird to be closing the door on this journey. I know I’ll be processing some of this experience for years to come. But I’ll be creating a new platform to share my thoughts and stories. Stay tuned. The end is near.
