SYMPTOMS OF A FAITH LOST - PART 11

Learning to Cope

I discovered many ways to cope during the next many months…some were beneficial, some could have been a little dangerous, and some just didn’t really work that well.

I started by gathering up everything that was his, everything that he had given me (with exception to the Frank Sinatra CD…because...well, why should I have to spend another $19.99 on a second copy? -Just because the guy who gave it to me is an asshole?? I don't think so.), and everything that reminded me of him and I either got rid of it or threw it in a box. I showed up to work with an armful of his junk and plopped it in his arms as he was standing in front of me with this confused and wondering expression on his face. I wondered, could he really be confused at this point? How dense is he really?

I redecorated my room, painted the walls, and got some new artwork to hang. We had spent nights together in that room, and I needed it to look like a completely different place.

I started neglecting my responsibilities and I stopped doing the things that I one enjoyed. My friends and family rarely saw me or heard from me. I started skipping classes and calling in “sick” to work again. I was sleeping all through the day and couldn’t sleep at night.

I ordered a bunch of man-hating, rage filled, vengeful female power songs from itunes and was constantly listening to it. Singing along to the music at the top of my lungs was very cathartic and satisfying.

And then I started burning things. I literally carried around a “burning can” and a bunch of matches in my car for a few months. I never knew when I might feel motivated to pull out something and burn it. I still had a few of his things around too, so I burned them. I wrote down memories and burned them. I wrote down my feelings of hate, of betrayal, of anger at myself, of sadness…and I burned them too.

I went on ridiculous cleaning sprees at the most random times. When I feel out of control of my emotions I need desperately to feel in control of something and that usually results in cleaning and organizing…and cleaning, and organizing (the common area on the floor of my dorm room was never cleaner than it was during those months!).

I enrolled for a weekly kickboxing class (even though I couldn’t really afford it) and imagined that his face, his hands, his neck, his eye, his heart...was pinned up to the punching bag and I got a lot of pleasure out of repeatedly punching and kicking him to death (not literally of course).

I threw my shoes in the river. I know it’s not the most green thing I could have done…but it was incredibly symbolic for me at the time. You see, through all four years that I knew him, we had the very same pair of classic black Adidas. We showed up to work wearing the same shoes and we’d get our shoes mixed up at friends’ houses. I don’t know how many times I saw our shoes sitting side by side. He said it was “proof that we were meant to be together” and no matter how ridiculous that was, I admit I kind of believed it a little bit. I knew that I needed to get a new pair of shoes…but more than that; I needed to destroy this old pair. I took out a permanent marker and wrote words of farewell, words of profanity, and words of empowerment…and then I tossed them over the Mississippi river bridge. And it wasn't just the shoes that I threw in the river that night, it was any chance of their ever again being a "me and him". And it felt so damn good.

I was starting to get a little self-injurious…doing anything I could think of to make myself sick because I so desperately wanted my physical body to feel as much pain as I felt mentally and emotionally. I started thinking of suicide and that’s when I knew I had to do something. Going to work each day, seeing his face, and reliving all that had happened was not helping me to move on or to let go of the anger, it was just making it worse…so I quit my job (which turned out to be one of the best decisions I made during that time) and that finally allowed me to get some much needed space from him.

I was starting to get a little reckless in other areas too. I would randomly drive to the lake and jump in during the middle of the night. I once attempted to switch seats with one of my friends while we were driving down the freeway. My other friend in the car almost had a panic attack, thoroughly freaked out by my "apparent death wish" as she wanted to have no part in it. Late one night I went for a long walk in the rain. I walked past all the bars we had been to that night, I walked past two of the restaurants where we had been together, and I walked all the way over to the other side of town, each step reclaiming a piece of land, a landmark, or a property where we had either been together, slept together, or worked together. I was reclaiming it for my own sake. Since all the shit went down, I had avoided everything that would remind me of him. I would refuse to go out if it meant I would be near one of those places or risk seeing him or someone that he knew. I would start to panic if I got too close, so I usually just turned around and went the other way. But that night, I was reclaiming it for me. I was no longer going to let him rule over me. I ended my walk a few hours later, on the other side of town, dripping wet…and scared for the first time. I was so far from home, I was wet and cold, and I was not in a good neighborhood. I called a friend and when I told him where I was he came to get me right away and drove me home. My friends were starting to worry about me, but I still took every chance I could to feel a little thrill, a little fear, a little danger…because anything was better than feeling sad.

I started to journal, I wrote poetry, and I created art work. I started taking guitar lessons to keep myself busy and I eventually started talking about what had happened. There was so much guilt and shame pent up in me and keeping it a secret didn’t help. I found that as I started talking about it a little bit of that shame fell away each time. I analyzed myself and my actions, in the attempt to learn every lesson possible because I never wanted to make those mistakes again.

SYMPTOM OF A FAITH LOST - PART 10

(one of) The Turn-Around(s)

Hitting rock bottom sure has a way of sending a skeptic straight back into the arms of religion...here’s yet another journal entry:

Dear God:

Thank you for revealing your truth to me. It’s been so long since I’ve believed – since I’ve wanted to believe. I’m excited because I know things are better than they were simply because I have let you in. You make everything so much better. All my problems will not go away and there will be hard times, but it’s different now because I’m with you. From the moment that I began to really question and really doubt and step out of faith there was a trail of MESS constantly following behind me and I am glad to know that it does not have to continue. In fact, right now I am going to grab a scissor, I'm going to turn around and I'm going to cut the string that connected me to that trail of mess…as far as I'm concerned, it is no longer behind me and will no longer taint the good things in my life. And I realized something about the other day in chapel when I was crying at the altar…It wasn’t an uncontrollable or unexplainable force that brought me to my knees….it was me – I finally surrendered my stubbornness, I surrendered my questions, I surrendered my doubts and my intense resistance, I surrendered my rebellion….and I believe that God honored that and he took a hammer (or a right hand! Lol) to that big huge wall standing in front of me. As I was on my knees I could feel something break. I felt a release and it felt so real. I don’t know exactly why it happened to be only two days later that I ended up making some pretty shitty decisions and went out with that guy again…it was like the wall that had just been attacked was up and standing erect, stronger than ever - the very next day – but why? I’m not sure I understand why right now but I think what happened was really the wake-up call that I needed. It sucked to go through it and it sucks to still be going through it but it caused me to turn my eyes upwards to you and so in an odd way I’m grateful for it. I feel so different now than I did even a few weeks ago. It’s hard to explain but before I felt so tied down to disbelief, so bound to doubt and to rebellion, like I was trapped – it was like I knew it wasn’t the best for me but I couldn’t make any other choice but to rebel and I don’t feel that way anymore.

After that one horrible night, I had a lot of healing to do. If I thought I was angry before, I was mistaken, and if I thought I hated that guy before, I couldn't be more wrong.

Even though I had clung back to religion and GOD and faith (and constantly had Christian songs like Nichole Nordeman’s “Mercies New”, Rita Springer’s “Freedom Reigns” and Eddie Kirkland’s “How He Loves” playing from my itunes on repeat…) I still had a ridiculous amount of pain and anger and hate pent up inside me and it needed to find its way out of me.

SYMPTOMS OF A FAITH LOST - PART 9

The Rock Hits Bottom

Unfortunately, my breakthrough was not enough to keep me away from "him".

This “guy” asks me to go get drinks with him on a Friday night and all my strength goes out the window. I had been dying to go out for drinks with this guy but he always refused. I just couldn’t say no.

Here’s another journal entry written after the events of that evening:

I still can’t believe what has happened in the last 24 hours. I have never in my life had that much hard alcohol (and I’m pretty sure it will never happen again). It’s like I don’t know who I am anymore. Somewhere in between that first shot of patron, the long island ice tea and that last lemon drop…things got pretty fuzzy. What really scares me about drinking is the power it has to alter your behavior. I had always heard it said that alcohol lowers your inhibitions but I have NEVER had a desire to do what I remember doing last night...at least not with him. I can still vividly recall what it was like. And I never once thought that it was weird or wrong, it was as if it was completely normal. What trips me out is that it felt so natural. I never once questioned what I was doing. It was like I’d done it a hundred times before. And even though I can remember it, it’s like I’m remembering somebody else’s story, somebody else’s life, somebody else's actions. My choices as of late have not been so good. I need to start making better choices. What scares me is the fact that I CAN’T REMEMBER what happened next. He said we had sex but I can’t prove whether that asshole is telling the truth or a lie. I might have lost my virginity last night but I can’t know that for sure and maybe I never will. I can’t even begin to explain how much that hurts. What scares me even more is the possibility of getting pregnant or having an STD. I would be surprised if he didn’t have any diseases (because he can't seem to keep his pants on) but I hope that he doesn’t. I need to stop messing with that dude.

After telling me that we had sex, he sent me on my way because "he had a study group to attend to" and he said he would call me later that afternoon. I drove home, sick as a dog, having to stop on my way to throw up along the side of the road. I slept it off and pretended like nothing had happened. None of my friends even knew that I had been spending the night with this guy and I certainly wasn’t ready to tell anyone that I had just lost my virginity to the asshole who had cheated on me when we were together - and on top of that, I couldn’t even remember it!

The “guy” never called me and I was feeling about as low as I could be. I decided that I really needed to know whether he was telling the truth…I just had to know whether or not I really had sex with him, and I knew I should probably get checked anyway. I was going to go to Planned Parenthood or something like that to see if they could tell whether or not I had sex, but they told me to go to the ER. And so I went. I told them what had happened and what I wanted to know…20 minutes later I found myself in a sterile room with my feet in the stir-ups and this lady telling me all about how I had been raped (which by the way, had NEVER crossed my mind until that very moment).

“There is no such thing as consent when you are drunk and given the fact that this guy knew how you felt about not wanting to have sex, he took advantage of you in your intoxicated state. He took from you what you would not give to him in a sober state.”

I was in a whirlwind of thoughts, emotions, and realities. This guy had still not called me (it was a couple days later at this point) and I was alone with the knowledge and the pain of what did (or did not) happen. I was starting to believe her…and then my phone rang. It was him. This guy always did have the most uncanny timing. He would call me as I’m in the ER attempting to figure out whether we did or did not have sex, experiencing the first pap smear of my life, getting poked and prodded, having my whole body examined, taking pills to prevent STD’s and unwanted pregnancy, and listening to this lady talking all about how I had been raped.

I called that guy back after I got home and I let him have it. I cussed at him and called him all types of names. I told him that I went to the ER and got a rape kit done…which is when he decided to tell me that he was “JUST JOKING” when he said we had sex. This asshole was just joking???? Are you kidding me? He said that he was so drunk that even he didn’t remember all of what had taken place that night. (It’s just like him to tell a lie like that and not think twice) I told him I was pressing charges with the police (that was the only way I could get the results of all the tests they did at the hospital) - he got scared - I delighted in the fact that he thought his life was about to end (even though I never really had any real intention of going to the police) - and then I hung up the phone.

The thing is...if this guy really cared about me at all, he wouldn’t have let me walk out of his house that morning with the thought that we had had sex, when he really didn’t know. He knew that I had never had sex, and he knew that I wanted to wait until marriage, and I know he saw the horror and the shock and the despair in my face when he told me that we did.

This guy had been like a drug to me…an addictive, yet overwhelmingly toxic substance…and I realized that I really needed to quit him…and I needed desperately to quit him for good this time.

SYMPTOMS OF A FAITH LOST - PART 8

Calling it "Quits"...again

I finally came to the realization that spending my nights in this dudes bed was not doing me any favors. If this “GOD” was real, he wouldn’t be pleased with it and spending my time wrapped up in his sheets was keeping me from the things I really wanted…a true love…a guy who would really see me and care for me, in a way that this other “guy” never could. I decided to stop seeing him. I was very confident in my position to leave him alone, and that very next day a friend of mine asked me to go to chapel…she said that I...“needed to be there.”

Normally a simple request wouldn’t have influenced me to go to chapel, especially considering the way I had been feeling lately, but this time was different. I felt certain that if I didn’t go, I would miss out on something…and so I went.

Here is an excerpt from my journal about what happened:

Something happened in chapel….I think something broke. That’s what it felt like anyways. All through worship, even though I wasn’t singing and wasn’t standing, I felt somehow different and I began to cry. It wasn’t much more than a tear here and there. I felt such strong emotion yet didn’t quite know why. At the end of the message, the speaker did an alter call reaching out to the people "who had fallen away and were doing things they were not supposed to be doing". This certainly could have been applied to me but I was still in one of my stubborn “I don’t believe” “this is a bunch of bullshit” attitudes and there was no way I was going up to the alter. I wasn’t ready to leave yet either for some reason. I continued to sit there and all of a sudden I was down on my knees with my head down. I don’t know exactly why I did it but it felt like a physical representation of a sort of surrender of my spirit or will or something. A friend came over to pray for me and in that moment something came over me because I just started to really cry my eyes out (tears falling to the ground, body shaking uncontrollably and snot dripping down my face) and I couldn’t stop it or hold it back. I’m not fully sure what to make of it right now but it seemed like a sort of breakthrough. I thought it felt like God was pursuing me – perhaps illustrating to me why I should definitely leave “that guy” alone. It was like he was showing me what it felt like to be truly, sincerely, and honorable pursued. It made me feel, for the first time in a long time, like I was worthy of that sort of pursuit.

SYMPTOMS OF A FAITH LOST - PART 7

A moment of weakness...

Although me and “this guy” worked together, I pretty thoroughly ignored him for the next three months. Shortly after I broke it off with him I found out from a mutual acquaintance that he did indeed have a baby on the way…in fact, he probably had 2 babies on the way. I found out just how pregnant the second girl was...did the math…and realized that this guy had definitely slept with this other girl while we were together. That damn asshole cheated on me. I was more angry than I had ever been in my entire life and it kind of took me by surprise a little bit. I didn’t know where to put all the anger. I avoided him because I had no idea what might actually come out of my mouth if I ever spoke to him. Although I was as close to hating him as I thought I could get, I still hoped for some sort of peace or reconciliation…sometime in the future and didn’t want to mess up my chances of that.

I worked on trying to get rid of the hate and the anger. And coincidentally, it was right around the time that I was feeling like I was ready to let it all go that I hear from a friend that “this guy” is talking about how he must have really hurt me and he wants to make it all better and make it up to me  somehow. He confronts me at work and we have our first conversation since I broke it off with him. I confront him with what I’ve heard and he admits to most of it. Surprisingly this does not make me more angry, it has the opposite effect and actually softens me towards him a little…not enough for me to go running back in his arms though. I tell him that I can’t remember the good times, that I can’t trust anything I thought we had together…because he lied. He fights to get back in my good graces…to no avail…for awhile. I finally agree to meet him for dinner a couple times and we continue to talk things out and address the past. I feel a little bit of that reconciliation that I was hoping for…and then it happens.

It’s over winter break and I’m feeling really lonely…feeling really sad…feeling like I just wish somebody would hold me. In a moment of weakness (and idiocy) I call this dude and ask him if I can come over. Of course he says yes and I make my way over there, telling him I want him to “just hold me” - so, naturally we decide that the best thing to do is lay in bed watching a scary movie. All through the movie I jump and scream and he squeezes me tight. It’s pretty late once the movie is done and although we had agreed that we weren’t going to do anything else he starts to make his move and I’m too tired to put up a fight. I end up spending the night…lying to my mom about where I am (for the first time in my entire life) and thinking that I’m probably going to regret it in the morning…only I DON’T regret it at all. I actually feel a little liberated…which was probably due to the fact that my conscience had now officially left the building. In lieu of my loss of faith, pretty much anything was acceptable and I didn’t feel guilty  at all about spending the night with my ex-boyfriend…a guy who had cheated on me…a guy who never really knew how to treat me right…a guy who I knew wasn’t a good guy and certainly did not deserve my time, my energy, or my affection. At the time, all I cared about was the fact that he knew my body and I knew his. He knew how to hold me right and make me feel good. Things with him were comfortable and at a time when I felt like I needed to be held, it wasn't scary at all to ask him to hold me. I convinced myself that my heart was not involved in these late night rendezvous and therefore nobody (especially not me) would get hurt...