Because of my trauma I erected steel walls all around me. What happens at home stays at home, and my silence was nearly complete until I realized more than just my wellbeing was at stake. When I turned my uncle in, I was protecting my brother. It was far too late for me, I thought, because my brokenness was beyond repair. My journals from that time speak of utter hopelessness – my life seemed ruined.

(It wasn’t.)

I hid the facts of what happened to me, but the walls were even thicker around the inner experience of my trauma. No one could touch that pain. When the state sent me to therapy, my new counselor tried her best to poke a hole through the walls, but they wouldn’t budge. I certainly wasn’t going to help her. My thoughts and emotions were terrifying creatures, to be avoided at all costs.

Ironically, it was booze that broke through. I was drinking heavily by age fourteen, and daily by sixteen. After a particularly difficult therapy session the pain was banging hard on the steel, and the inner noise was deafening. I went home and took to the bottle, hoping to drown my turmoil. Evidently it didn’t work – blacked out, I poured my soul onto paper, writing of things I never wanted to share. Then I did the unthinkable – I mailed it to my therapist.

She greeted me solemnly the next week, handing me my letter and suggesting I read my words aloud. It was my handwriting all right, but I didn’t remember sending her anything. The words were desperate. I wrote of my brokenness and despair. I was sure that protecting my brother had been my life’s purpose, and felt I’d failed. Suicide felt like the only answer.

I sat in silence for a bit, refusing to say another word. She expressed concern for my safety, and asked if I could stay safe. Yes, I said, although I didn’t mean it. I wanted to die. I wanted the pain to stop, the noise to end. She pulled out her yellow notepad and drafted a safety contract. I signed it, but it meant nothing to me. I’d already attempted suicide. I would again. If the booze hadn’t have betrayed me, she’d know nothing of my intentions.

Scary stuff.

I went home and instead of trying to kill myself, I got drunk and wrote another letter. Thus became my new pattern. Over the course of the next several years of therapy I was rarely able to speak of my secrets, but I wrote. Years later my therapist presented me with the letters I’d written – three large binders full!

Letter by letter, I broke some holes in those steel walls. I was letting my therapist in.

In Invincible Hope I write a lot about those inner experiences, and you may think I’ve completely torn those walls down. That’s far from the truth. I’ve simply poked some holes in the walls, so now they resemble bars rather than solid steel. I still have a deep need to control the flow. I can reach through now and touch your heart, but I still struggle to let you touch mine. Shoot, I sometimes struggle to let myself reach through those bars.

But like a prisoner with a need to escape, I keep shaving the steel, hoping to break through.

Just this week, I realized that I could work on those walls my whole life, and might never break through completely. Perhaps the only way out of this self-imposed prison is to love myself.

These days I believe in God’s love and try my best to extend love to all I encounter. Except, of course, myself. Towards me, I am judgmental, perfectionistic, and unforgiving – all opposites of God’s standards. Yet if God loves you, He must love me too.

When I was first getting sober years ago, one of my regular meditations was a chant, with the words: I am a child of God. He’s looking out for me, and He wants me to be happy, joyous, and free.

I think it’s time to chant again and remember that if God thinks I’m worthy of love, perhaps I can try to live that too.

I think I just poked another hole in my wall.