While I am very aware that life is not like a sitcom and there is no writers room behind a door mapping out everything for me to experience, it can sometimes incorporate my favorite storytelling technique: the callback. 

A few years back, maybe 2017 or ‘18, I had the opportunity to be in NYC for work and ended up making (separate) plans to see an old high school friend and sit down in a NYC tattoo chair and get something new (basically a tattoo souvenir - a tattouvenir? I digress). We will call the friend “M” and the tattoo was directly from the pages from The Handmaids Tale — you know the quote “Nolite te bastardes carborundum”. Don’t let the bastards grind you down, a wonderful survivors anthem (and something I reflected on a lot during the toddler years as she was the often the bastardes in question). It was a fitting theme because meeting up with “M” was a cathartic connection between two girls from the suburbs who found themselves in places they thought they would never be and surviving, sometimes thriving regardless. For M, sex work. Obviously for me, substance abuse (and the carry-on, never-checked baggage that comes with it). While we weren’t particularly close in high school, it felt like the stars aligned during that conference weekend, bringing her and I together in a meaningful moment of human connection. And that was it. Weekend over, let’s resume our separate lives and like each other’s social media posts from time to time.

This past weekend, as I mentally prepared for an upcoming tattoo session (the first one since that weekend in NYC) I got a text from M. She was about to check into rehab for alcoholism and remembered I went to treatment once upon a time. She was nervous, and I was so grateful she still had my number and felt like I could be a resource to her. I told her September is a wonderful month to get sober and I looked forward to celebrating our September sobriety birthdays with her from now on. As we talked, me sharing the underlying mechanisms of my alcoholism to a steady soundtrack of “mmhmm”, “yes”, and “Exactly!”, I felt myself going back down the rabbit hole of where I was when I was about to enter treatment. As of publishing time, M is in her treatment center and I’m still strolling memories of the years leading up to rehab and the years following, attempting to draw up from the well the same strength I had then to write what I need to write now.

Call it trauma, call it a shoutout to the Puritanical origins of this country that continue to linger in laws and minds, but I’ve been stumbling for weeks on how to share this particular callback to circa 2003-2010 and the lessons learned. I decided to break these lessons into at least two narratives to make it a manageable experience for me and a more succinct storytelling delivery method, but I offer no guarantees on the success of this intention.

Let’s stroll down this road of sex, identity, and the fallacy of deriving identity from others that plagued my world pre-addiction and throughout. Please be advised, sexual assault is a predominant theme of the narrative below.

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As mentioned in older posts, my first love was good ol’ Ed the Eating Disorder but honestly binging Doritos, Sour Skittles, and Warheads to the point of dissolving the top layer of skin on my tongue on a regular basis (why were Warheads sold in tongue-damaging quantities to children?) was just not sustainable long term. 

By high school, dating was rapidity becoming my drug of choice. It was a very simple logic rule; if you liked me, then I was good enough. But the problem with this line of thinking is that teen hormones never stop at “like”, high school parties are rarely known as positive, healthy, affirming spaces, and when you have a crippling inability to ask for help, advice, or perspective, you find yourself stuck in unhealthy places with unfamiliar faces before too long (cue Mad World by Tears for Fears).

But I didn’t care. I just needed someone to like like me.

The first few boyfriends and flings were exercises in how to hand over my self worth and identity to a romantic partner. With each handoff came an unspoken expectation that they couldn’t leave me (turns out they could) and they would receive their ideal version of me in return (clearly not sustainable).

As a band kid,  I took great pride in my first real boyfriend being a drum major (Jesus fucking Christ, Rebecca — I’m still cringing). It lasted for about a month before he dumped me for my friend, also in band (she was thinner than I so of course my eating disorder was all over that one). 

I messed around with a classmate/movie extra who’s biggest role was being a dick to Frankie Muniz in Big Fat Liar. Cue my absolute shock that he didn’t want to pursue anything further than a one-time party hookup. 

My long time high school boyfriend was almost as insecure as I was, but I gave him just cause. Three months into the relationship (around when the oxytocin stopped flowing regularly) I made out with someone else on a ski trip and then spent over a year denying it because I didnt know how to be truly honest and let someone make their own informed decisions. Neither of us could end the relationship due to the shitty self esteem needs it did serve until we were both just miserable and ready to face the unknown over being together any longer. By the time it was over, I was hollowed out and rapidly craving self esteem in the quickest possible way.

I made it through high school technically a virgin, but by the summer after graduation I was single and with friends who modeled sex as a casual affair — something to do before, during, or after getting fucked up. To fit in, I quickly lost my virginity to a random guy at a beach house party and never looked back. I was filled with this new sense of empowerment: I didn’t need a boyfriend, I just needed another’s desire of me to prop up that one last molecule of serotonin holding everything together in my mind.

I embraced hook up culture and how much easier it was to navigate than dating or committed relationships. I moved through friends of friends for hook up connections, eventually hooking up with people I met online.

Then I experienced my first rape. 

I met someone online, invited him over, and realized I didn’t want to move forward with anything sexual. He did. I wish I could tell you I fought back, that I pushed him, scratched him, screamed for help, but I was scared and just shut down emotionally after saying no (a little bit of Freeze, a little bit of Fawn, but no Flight or Fight). I remember finally understanding when others described floating away to somewhere else in times of duress, especially trauma. I made an active decision to just go somewhere else in my mind until it was all over. 

Thankfully, it did end and I went out that night and partied hard in an effort to move on. But two days later, I finally talked to a friend about what had happened. She correctly identified it as sexual assault despite my constant rationalizing, minimizing, and questioning what really happened. “He didn’t hit me, drug me, hold me down, restrain me”, “I invited him over”, “I let it take happen”  etc. was all part of my platform that it wasn’t rape. Thankfully, she pushed all that aside and helped me talk to my mom, file a report with the police, and secure emergency contraception. Thank you, Julia.  

Like so many other women, my experience reporting the rape to the police was a soul crushing affair. There was no Detective Olivia Benson waiting at the precinct to speak to me as a victim. There was no formal rape exam and certainly no advocate or resources availed to me by law enforcement. I told my story, allowed the police to take my butter yellow bed sheets for evidence, and was told it was a “he said, she said” situation so I shouldn’t expect much of anything to happen. And I never heard from the police officers again. 

I did not stay sober that night or for many nights after. 

I couldn’t tell you if or when there was a point where I crossed an invisible line from drug user to drug addict, but I do remember a psychological shift occurring soon after the rape. I just didn’t care about myself anymore — It felt useless to care. I simultaneously felt “no one will come and save you” and “you’re not worth saving” and lived my life accordingly.

So when I went off to college in the fall (convincing my parents I was fine was a well-honed skill at this point) and was raped two more times before the first semester ended, I couldn’t find it within myself to report it, talk about it with friends, or change any behaviors.

One rape was an intentional set up by a friend I was interested in (we we will call him C). My roommate was C’s roommate’s ex (let’s call him “T” for Trauma) and we all hung out together. One night it was just me hanging out with the two men. They proceeded to get me blinding drunk and the night ended with my roommates ex, T, raping me. I blamed myself and was so ashamed and afraid to lose my friendship with my roommate that I said nothing and tried to move on. She later found out about that night anyway, but believed it was consensual sex and that I had betrayed her, ending the friendship.

Another time I came to in a strangers bed after a party, in the middle of the rape. Whether I blacked out or passed out again, I’m not sure but I came to again in that same room that night to someone else raping me. I somehow made it home, took a bunch of birth control  pills in hopes that it would have a similar effect to then-prescription only Plan B, and resolved to move on. I had to drink or get high to the point of blackout, sweet oblivion. If I was assaulted while in that state, so be it. I told myself I deserved it. 

It’s clear that by this point, I had made a deal with my disease: keep me away from experiencing myself and I will serve you forever. There wasn’t room to love myself or another while in this affair with addiction.

That’s not to say I didn’t try dating, but most attempts were pretty awful (as they say in the rooms of recovery, “my picker was broken”). My first college boyfriend cheated on his girlfriend with me and then left her for me. When I realized if he could cheat with me, then he could cheat on me, I broke up with him. He then attempted suicide, messaging me in real time to let me know that he was ending it all. I called the paramedics to pump his stomach, and tucked that guilt right in my pocket with everything else I assumed responsibility for. 

I ghosted a few first dates that weren’t held in places I could drink. Other dates in bars ended predictably; we went home together and didn’t speak again.

Towards the end of freshman year, the stars seemed to align and I dated someone I had the biggest crush on that whole year. It was long distance so I spent my evenings talking or texting, not partying or getting loaded. The ol’ love drug was a wonderful, welcomed substitute and for a brief moment life felt healthy and sane and safe. But you can’t just bullshit and hope your way into stability and sanity, and the relationship couldn’t survive me. After it was over, I felt such intense grief around my inability to be in a normal relationship because I felt so damaged. I rarely had a sober day after that and quickly resumed getting loaded, waking up somewhere else (usually missing a shoe — so many cute shoes lost to my disease) and changing my friends to meet my substance abuse needs. 

It was after a weekend where I crossed a new line and slept with my drug dealer (part affirmation, part access to drugs, the BOGO of serotonin) that the still, small voice of “you need serious help” got louder. Just a few days later, I called home and begged to be admitted into a drug treatment program. But just because I wanted to be sober did not mean I was ready to give up all my quick fixes. If my original progression was binge eating, then sex/love addiction, then substance abuse disorder, my path forward from drug addiction had to first make stops at bottoms in sex/love addiction, then the eating disorder. 

My first week in rehab, I began throwing up my food in secret. My roommate was actually a sister of a former classmate (you don’t need all six degrees to find a connection in the rooms of recovery) and she happened to be a beautiful bulimic; I was a quick study. There was another patient we both tried to hook up with as if we were in competition with each other. Truthfully, only I was in competition with her. She was thin and beautiful and if this fellow patient wanted us both, that meant I was equal to her in my affirmation-starved mind.

Thankfully, that was the last time I had sex without commitment and used sex as a wellspring of identity and/or affirmation. It’s a lot harder to commit to substance abuse sobriety and also rationalize engaging in the exact same sex and  love addiction behaviors that led you straight to substance abuse. 

I remember trying to contact my exes when I reached my amends step in rehab but none seemed interested in what I had to say. I didn’t blame them, but I did and do still regret the harm I caused.  As much as I was a victim, I also held people emotionally hostage, set unrealistic expectations, abandoned the people who cared about me, and much more.

My sobriety birthday is next week (16 years sober! My sobriety can, but shouldn’t, drive), meaning it’s also been almost 16 years since I threw myself towards any man that seemed interested in me, sacrificing all dignity for affirmation. It has been over 16 years since I was last raped. But based on the tears that keep popping up as I walk back through these memories, and knowing the memories to document next, it all feels much more recent. 

Part I is about the history, the early behaviors, and how they played into my sobriety bottom. But as you’ll read later, whenever I get the courage to map it all out, you’ll see that sobriety is not a panacea and abuse can and does still occur in the rooms of recovery. But, because I stayed sober, I finally found my voice and a small slice of justice for myself.

Olivia Benson would be proud.