The descent my life took after first trying Meth was as fast as it was devastating.  In two years I had lost my job, car, home, and kids.  At rock bottom, after receiving an ultimatum from my daughter, it was as if I was shaken out of a dream.  I looked around at what had become of my life as if someone else has destroyed the landscape.  I wasn’t sure how I got to that point or why I chose to turn to drugs.  I proceeded to spend hours in drug treatment combing through the remote coffers of my brain in an effort to fill in the blanks.  The answers that unfolded would become the most powerful sobriety tool I could have received.  When I began to understand my own story, healing was released and my life altered multidemensionally.

Understanding my story wasn’t simply plotting milestones across a timeline, but pinpointing pivotal moments that had written the narrative in my mind in regards towhat I believed about myself. The power of this exercise lied in the realization that I had allowed other people and circumstances to write this narrative.  I came to believe what was told to me instead of developing a secure sense of my own identity.  What I believed about myself was shaped early in my life; something is wrong with me, I don’t belong, and I am not enough.  

Something is wrong with me.

The first time I remember feeling out of place was in Kindergarten.  When we had free time to roam about the classroom, I gravitated toward the corner where the kids pretended to be a family.  There was a mini house set-up complete with plastic kitchen, small couch and a doll cradle.  When the group of kids assembled it was time to decide who was going to be mommy, daddy, and children.  One of the kids automatically assigned me as daddy and told me I had to leave for work.  The other kids couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be the daddy, but instead stay home to cook and clean.  I remember with vivid clarity a brown-haired girl saying what are you, a sissy?  This was the first time I had heard the word ‘sissy’ but certainly not the last.  Something must be wrong with me.

I don’t belong.

I was about ten years old when my dad sat me and my brother down to tell us he had planned a camping trip for the three of us.  I was excited by this because he had made it a habit to invite his brother (who happened to be my age) along to all of our outings. When I expressed my desire to make plans that included only immediate family, my dad replied that his brother was like the son he never had but he would plan something to shut me up.  The day of the camping trip came and the three of us loaded into the truck, my brother and I in the back, and took off for the river.  A few miles into the trip, my dad made an unplanned stop and picked up his brother who got into the front of the truck with him.  I stared at my dad through the back window as he turned and shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes at me.  I recall looking out of the truck as we pulled off onto the road, the wind blowing the tears out of my eyes and feeling a hurt that burned my stomach. I don’t belong.

I am not enough.

I thought that I had found my tribe when I began attending church on a regular basis with my mom.  I was beginning to receive much-needed accolades from her family and church members because I didn’t cuss or drink and took an interest in learning about the Bible.  That was until age 11 when my hormones surged and I found myself attracted to the boys in my class.  I remember one night sitting in church beside my mom listening to my Uncle, who was also the Pastor, giving a sermon on the topic of Sodom and Gomorrah.  The message?  How the sin of homosexuality would send me directly to hell and how God hated it so much that he burned cities that allowed it to the ground.  I went home after church, opened the window to my room and prayed and cried as I stared at the moon asking God to help me, to take me away.  This was a prayer I would pray many times over for years.  I am not enough.

I could write for hours about the ways in which the narrative that I allowed to be written for me caused a relentless pursuit of acceptance and approval. From my marriages to the college degrees to continuously finding new jobs where I would be praised for my performance.  I was always trying to get others to rewrite my narrative, to validate it, to measure my worth.  And so when I discovered the escape drugs could give to me, a temporary departure from the battle of my mind, I jumped in wholeheartedly.  And the bonus was that the Meth population welcomed me as one of their own.  I became a part of a group who had similar narratives, who could relate.  This felt comfortable to me for a short period of time until my life spun out of control.

But then, as I transitioned from active addiction to building a sober life the feelings of being out of place and not being enough compounded.  I had lived for so many years believing the lies of an externally-built narrative that I didn’t know any other way of life.  Taking charge of my own narrative was scary and uncomfortable.  But through drug treatment and my support system, I found the courage to take responsibility for my story.  I have vowed to never allow no one or no thing power over what I believe about myself.  The results have been revolutionary beyond my wildest dreams.

If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, that confused little boy, I would wrap my arm around him and tell him that he isn’t weird, or wrong, or misplaced.  I would assure him that deep within he has all of the love and light he will ever need to be happy.  I would promise him that he has big work to do, people to touch, and love to spread all over the Universe.  I can’t go back in time, but I am eternally grateful that I can tell myself those things today and fully comprehend the implications.

Nothing is wrong with me, I do belong, and most of all, I AM ENOUGH!