The Moment I Started Healing in 2007

I very, very distinctly remember one of the first steps I took on my "healing journey". It's interesting to even write those words because I fear it implies some sort of linear progression: and as many of us now, nothing about this process is linear.

So maybe a better way to think about it would be one of the very first moments I realize the swirling chaos inside of me could organize into something else. Something significantly less painful, even if I wasn't sure what that meant yet.

Ok, let's go back in time.

February 2007, I'm a senior in high school and things are not going well. I was on a very dangerous path, one filled with bad choices and even worse coping mechanisms. I woke up filled with dread each long, discomfort-filled day.

Nothing felt safe and I felt like I was sprinting from one lilly pad to the next, trying not to fall into the water. Unable to stop or see anything else other than the lily pad ahead of me.

I remember lying in bed one lonely night, staring at the ceiling and thinking "I hate myself so much. When did this happen? Why?" I wouldn't understand the answers to those questions for a long, long time, but it was the first crack in the veneer of what was going on.

It was the first time I paused to look at what was happening in my life and question it. Not change it. But the first question of: "how did I get here?!".

Not too long after this night- maybe a month later- is when the first glimmer of healing happened.

Through some combination of good luck, privilege, and timing: I went on an exchange trip to Spain.

I'll be honest, I almost didn't go. Katrina had wiped my memory so terribly that I had gone from being one of the top Spanish students in the state to not even remembering how to conjugate basic verbs.*

I feared what going to a foreign country for the first time would mean for me: struggling with basic Spanish, a low key 18-year-old alcoholic-in-training, terrified to leave the trauma-bonded group of people I knew in New Orleans.

But the one positive side of being deeply depressed and numb is that I didn't have the wherewithal to stop the train that was already in motion. And I'm so glad I didn't.

It wasn't actually the trip to Spain that shifted things for me, it was the flight home. The trip was great, sure. We saw lots of old churches, ate a ton of Spanish pastries, trudged to discotecas in the rain, and learned Spanish curse words for the first time (like any good teenager).

On the long flight home, I felt something ever so slightly shift in me.

It was the first time I got a glimpse that there was a life outside of the trauma cycle I was trapped in. My world in New Orleans had become increasingly smaller and myopic. Each day was just about surviving.

Traveling to Spain was the first time it crossed my mind that there was a whole big world out there. A different world.

Secondly, I felt like a kid again for the first time in awhile. Being on a class trip to Spain, we got to do all of the dumb teenager stuff you do: pajama parties where you chug soda until it comes out of your nose, gossiping about boys, and shopping for gaudy bedazzled t-shirts in tourist shops. We took ridiculous photos of ourselves making silly faces in serious historical sites and posted it on the newly invented Facebook (the marvel of technology!)

I got the faintest idea that there's not just one way, but many ways to live in this world. And on some level: I had more of a choice than I thought.

I wish I could say everything magically turned around, but of course it didn't. But a shift happened, a subtle organization of my internal chaos.

I came back from Spain and while I still partied, I detached from the identity of "party girl" a bit. Maybe I could be someone else, after all.

I went cold turkey with all of the boys (everyone was 17-18 years old at this time so I stand by the use of the word "boys") I had been seeking validation from. I wasn't sure what else was out there, but I knew there had to be something else. I didn't have to keep engaging with these guys.

Soon, I would find out I got into college and I would set my sights on UC-Berkeley. After completely f*cking around most of senior year, I snapped into focus the last two months of school. I wanted to get out, to go to California, and get a fresh start. And I wanted to come prepared.

Seriously, I've never cared about math as much as I did that last two months of senior year of high school. I was determined to show up at Berkeley as prepared as possible.

I didn't understand what healing was or that I even had anything to heal from, but I started to see a different option, a different life for me. I didn't have to keep on plodding down this path of bad decisions, dangerous people, discomfort, and death (literally).

I wasn't sure where I was going, but just that it was a different path. I stopped sprinting from lily pad to lily pad and started walking the lifelong path of healing.

I'm not going to say the path has been easy, but I think it's been less painful than the alternative. As painful as healing is, nothing hurts as bad as living in a non-stop trauma response.

Even though I didn't know what I was doing at all, I'm so glad I had that first glimmer, that first passing thought that maybe there was something else out there for me. I know for a fact, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this today if I had not.

The fried calamari sandwich that evidently changed my life!

*Adult therapist brain knows that this is because trauma deeply impacts the memory systems in your brain. I didn't know this at this time so I internalized it as a "me problem". P.S.: ten years later I would face that fear and get my Spanish skills back :)