Tuesday, August 30, 2022 My Story Part 5

What do you do when everything comes crashing down? You go back home – and that’s just what I did, devastated, wounded and humiliated, like a soldier returning home after a disastrous failed campaign. I did some Olympic medal-worthy wallowing in my sadness and tried to escape it all by visiting my bosom buddy Sara who was attending college in Duluth. While there I went to see a counselor who suggested that perhaps SD had treated me poorly. Somehow this was a new thought, but once introduced it blossomed quickly into full-fledged rage against SD, accompanied by torrents of profanity in my journal. It was shockingly easy to give way to this very dark anger, but I also realized that my life had to go on, so when I went back home, I got a full-time job working at an insurance company.

I spent the next part of my life in recovery mode. Even as I struggled to get over SD, I had what we now call “trust issues.” I had given myself, body and soul, to a man who ended up rejecting me. I didn’t know how to overcome that. One of my friends told me that no matter what, I always had myself. Thus began a long season of protecting myself, body and soul, at all costs. I came to understand that I couldn’t depend on anyone but myself. In spite of my fear of being vulnerable again, this didn’t stop me from developing one crush after another on men that happened to enter the orbit of my life. Although many of my crushes were one-sided, I did some dating during this time. I even turned the tables and asked a couple of guys out instead of waiting for them to ask me, proud of my feminist bona fides. One of these guys had forgotten who I was but upon being reminded, rallied enough to say he’d meet me somewhere. He never showed. Ouch. “I am woman, hear me roar!” I was one part hopeful, one part fearful and one part bitterful (okay, that’s not a word, but it should be!). Not a great combination for relationship building. But on the plus side, I wrote scads of poems and songs about the breakup and unrequited love – I really think I could have given Adele a run for her money.

The only thoughts I had about any sort of god in those days was the unobtrusive god of the aforementioned Serenity Prayer. I wrote out the SP several times in my journal, but it wasn’t a prayer so much as it was a mantra to help me calm and center myself. I wasn’t thinking about the God of the Bible – heaven forbid! Anything but that! In fact, Sara and I had gone to an Overeater’s Victorious meeting together once after my break-up with SD. This was basically Overeater’s Anonymous except with Jesus added back in. Both of us stayed studiously quiet during the meeting, uncomfortable with the religiosity of it all. To our horror, when it was time for the meeting to adjourn, they couldn’t adjourn it like normal people – oh, no, we had to stand in a circle and join hands while someone prayed. And this was no ordinary prayer, either. It was a full-fledged charismatic prayer accompanied by the sounds of everyone in the circle (except us) saying over and over, “Jesus, Jesus! Yes, Jesus!” To our ears, it sounded like a lot of hissing. As soon as the hissing was done and the final amen pronounced, we bolted out of there like we’d just escaped from prison. Safe in the car, we talked about how odd and awful and uncomfortable it was. We agreed that while it was okay to believe in a god of some sort, this Jesus stuff was taking it all a bit too far.

Meanwhile, back at the insurance company, I was eating a tuna fish sandwich one day for lunch and decided to go back to college to become a dietitian. I was interested in food and interested in eating disorders – seemed like a perfect match. I started up the next fall and on the surface it appeared that I was well past Recovery and sailing boldly on the good ship Victory, but I continued to vacillate wildly in my emotions.

“I’m so depressed.” “I’m a survivor!”

“No one will ever love me.” “Who cares as long as I love myself!”

“Life is too hard.” “I will learn to face life’s challenges one by one!!”

“I have no self-confidence.” “You can do whatever you set your mind on!”

And so on. At least I had myself – but which self was that? No matter, I was getting good at using pop psychology to prop myself up whenever things took a downward turn. In the midst of all of this, a small pebble dropped almost unnoticed into the continuously roiling waters of my life. I received a letter from my friend Sara saying that she was growing closer to God and learning to understand about Jesus Christ. I believe she even made an appeal for me to do the same. Oh, Sara, you traitor! I was repulsed by the whole thing, but wrote in my journal, “I wonder if I am missing something?” That small pebble quietly and efficiently began making ever widening concentric circles of which I was hardly aware. The Holy Spirit was working in stealth mode.