When I was ten years old I started to feel very exposed and started to feel very very awkward. Every day I was pushed out of my home and into school- all oily, and pudgy and conspicuous. All the other girls seemed so together and cool and easy, and I started to feel like a loser in a world that preferred super heroes. So I made my own cape, and I tied it tight around me. My cape was pretending and addiction. The truth is, we all have our own superhero capes - Perfectionism, overworking, snarkiness, and apathy: They are all superhero capes. Our capes are what we put over ourselves so our real selves, our real tender selves don't have to be seen and cant be hurt. Our capes keep us from having to feel much at all. Both good and bad things are just deflected off the cape. So for the last ten years , my capes of pretending and addiction have kept me safe and hidden.
People think of addicts as insensitive liars, but we don't start out that way. We start out as extremely sensitive truth tellers. We feel so much pain and so much love and we think that the world doesn't want us to feel that much, and doesnt want us to need the comfort that we need so desperately. So we start pretending- We try to pretend like we are supposed to be. We numb and we hide and we pretend. And that pretending does eventually turn into a life of lies. But to be fair, we thought we were supposed to be lying. They tell us from a very early age that when someone asks us how we are doing, the only appropriate answer is, "Fine, and you?" But the thing is, people are truth tellers. We are born to make our unknowns known, and we will find somewhere to do it. So, in private, with the booze or the over-shopping, or the food, we tell the truth. We say, actually, I'm not fine.
Because we don't feel safe telling that truth in the real world, we make our own little world, and that is addiction. That is whatever cape you put on it. So what happens is we end up living in these little tinny, controllable, predictable dark worlds instead of all together in the big, bright, messy world.
I binged and purged for the first time when I was ten, and I have every single day since then. Seems normal to me, but here's the thing- every single time I began to feel anxious or worried or angry I thought something was wrong with me. So I took that nervous energy to the kitchen and I stuffed it all down with food, and then I would panic and I would purge. After all of that I would be laid out on the bathroom floor, so exhausted and so numb that I never had to go back and deal with whatever it was that made me feel that way in the first place. That is what I wanted. I did not want to deal with the discomfort and messiness of being a human being.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I finally decided to tell the truth in the real world. I marched into the guidance office and I said, "Actually, I am not fine, Someone help me." And I was sent to Saint Joseph's.
And at Saint Joseph's, for the first time in my life, I found myself in a world that finally made sense to me. In high school, we had to care about geometry when our hearts were breaking because we were just bullied in the hallway, or no one would sit with us at lunch. We had to learn about ancient Rome, when all we really wanted was to learn how to make and keep a real friend. We had to act tough when we felt scared and we had to act confident when we were really confused. Pretending was a matter of survival. High school is like the real world (sometimes), but at Saint Joe's there was no pretending. The jig was up. We had groups on how to express how we really felt through art and writing, or how to be a good listener, or being brave enough to tell our own story while being kind enough to not tell someone else's. No body was ever aloud to be left out. Everybody was worthy, that was the rule, just because they existed. There, we were brave enough to take off our capes. All I ever needed to know, I learned at Saint Joesph's.
I remember a sandy haired girl who was so beautiful... she told her truth on her arms. I held her hand one day while she was crying, and I saw that her arms were just sliced up. In there, people wore their scars on the outside, so you knew where they stood , and they told the truth so you knew why they stood there. I was there for two months, and I never really gave it the credit it deserved. Looking back, I wish I had stayed longer.
So, I graduated high school, and now I have gone onto college- which is way crazier than Saint Joesph's. In college I have added on the capes of several abusive relationships, and being a loner . The sun has risen every day, and that is when I start bingeing and purging, when the sun sets I cry myself to sleep. The sunrise is usually the signal to get up, but it has been my signal to come down. Come down from the emotional abuse, and "family", and mental harm I put myself through every night. And I cannot come down, that is to be avoided at all costs, so I hate the sunrise. I close the blinds, and I put the pillow over my head and my spinning brain tortures me about the people who are going out into their day, into the day to make relationships and peruse their dreams and have a day. I have not day, I only have night.
Id like to think of hope as that sunrise; it comes out every single day to shine on everybody equally. It comes out to shine on the sinners and the saints, the druggies and the cheerleaders. It never withholds and it doesn't judge. If you spend your entire life in the dark and then one day decide to come out, it will be there, waiting for you.
For years I have thought of the sunrise as searching, and accusatory, and judgmental. But maybe it is just hope's daily invitational to me to come back to life. And I think if you still have a day, and are still alive, you are still invited. I just wish it was that easy.
Until next time-
Reach out for those who need you
Accept the hand of the Lord in your life
and wake up to meet the sunrise
Wishing you the best-
The Coffee Shop Mormon.
