I have one singular memory from the time before I knew that there was something wrong with me. In this hazy, comforting recollection, I am sitting on the back of my dad’s bike in one of those hard plastic kiddie-seats attached behind the saddle. My little legs are swinging back and forth and I have mud on my feet. My dad is walking the bike through a door in our fence between the front and back yard, and I feel safe. I feel peaceful. In this memory, my only job is to be me. All the world is right. It’s a powerful memory, if a bit sun-bleached and faded. Because of the house that my family was living in at the time of this memory, I couldn’t have been more than three years old. My next memories involve Transformer and She-Ra action figures, and my favorite purple corduroy pants with a sparkly snap for the top button that keeps popping open because my lil’ belly is too big for my pants. In these memories following the one on my dad’s bike, there is a sneaky, sticky, pervasive feeling of knowing that something is wrong with me. On the surface, the “wrongness” in the purple corduroy memory is straight-forward. I’ve outgrown my pants and I’m trying desperately to shrink myself and hide from the grown-ups that my pants are too small. Looking back, I can clearly identify the what-the-heckness of a young child feeling wrong because they have outgrown an item of clothing. But it took me a really long time to be able to see that it wasn’t my fault that: a. I outgrew my pants, b. I felt guilty about outgrowing my pants, and c. I felt a compulsion to hide that I outgrew my pants.

Why am I telling you about my earliest memories? Well, they are the creation story of my consciousness – a set of souvenirs that, like those cheap t-shirts that Auntie Maude always brings home from her vacations – hold scent and clues of their origin within the scratchy yet disturbingly strong connective fibers. My memories tell the story of the way I began to make sense of the world, its inhabitants, and my place in it. And my memories tell the story of how deeply I felt my wrongness. 

In childhood and early adolescence, I couldn’t understand, nor explain, my sense that there was something wrong with me. I just knew it was true—I was different, flawed. And if anyone found out, they would realize that I wasn’t worthy of care and attention, much less love. I hid my feelings and I tried so fervently to become worthy, to be whatever and whoever people wanted me to be. If I could give enough, I thought, then maybe it wouldn’t matter that there was something wrong with me. I became someone who obsessed over trying to find out what people wanted, and delivering that. I was a good big sister, taking care of my younger sibling without complaint. I was a good daughter, contributing through housework, cooking, and not getting into trouble. I was the kid that no one needed to worry about. Through all of this I hid my dirty little secret, that something was wrong with me. Because why else would I feel the way that I did? I couldn’t walk past a mirror without being sick to my stomach. I had no love for myself. I knew in my heart that even my best wasn’t enough to be worthy of love and attention. I distracted from this inner pain by learning how to be silly and entertaining, which are two attributes that I do naturally enjoy! But I played them up, feeling that if I was making the jokes, no one else could laugh at me because they would all be laughing with me already. 

Into this jumble of early adolescent confusion came my first addiction. Was it booze? Nope. Weed? Nah. Y’all, it was church. I was an active member of the youth group at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church, mostly because it was expected of me, but I loved it because it changed the way that I felt. When I was at church, it was okay that there was something wrong with me, there is something wrong with everyone—I mean, it’s a hospital for sinners, right? And the friends that I made in Youth Group were truly stellar people, many of whom I am still in touch with. Something happened to me at church though, I felt okay there. I’m convinced it gave me dopamine, and I craved the relief I felt during and just after youth events. Throughout high school I stayed active at St. Martin’s, and I even decided to attend a Lutheran University with the intention to study Youth Ministry and become an ordained pastor. I felt called. I was absolutely certain that God was behind the desire that I felt to serve in this way. All through these years I had a name for the wrongness that I felt about myself…it was a “God-shaped hole.” Now, I want to be sure that as I write about my experience with the church, I do not imply in any way that the church was at fault for what happened next.

At Texas Lutheran University, I joined an organization called YARP, which stood for Young Adult Resource Person. We were essentially year-round camp counselors and traveled all over Texas leading youth events, retreats, and musical gatherings. It was great to have this way to serve as I was a student, and I treasure my time spent as a YARP. But it was toward the end of my sophomore year that the wrongness came back, and this time, it hit like a load of bricks. I could not understand why it was back if I was serving God in all of these ways. I was a member of the worship team on campus, I was a Theology major for heaven’s sake…why was the feeling back again? In my opinion, my first addiction, church, stopped working. I started drinking during this time, because I had to turn off the incessant messaging in my head that told me I was not enough, I was unworthy of love, and there was something wrong with me. Even from the beginning, I very rarely drank for enjoyment, I drank to survive these things that I thought about myself. 

I remember very clearly being at a breaking moment towards the end of my sophomore year. I went into the chapel on campus, a familiar place to me, and I walked to the altar and knelt. I asked God for help. I prayed, “I don’t need to be okay, and I will keep working for you, but please, God, please just make me not want to die.” I don’t know for sure how long I knelt there, but it was long enough for there to be bruises on my knees when I finally stood. I had heard nothing. Felt nothing. In my mind, God had seen through me and realized I wasn’t worth an answered prayer. So, I thought I must need to try a heavier hit of ministry, and joined an organization called Youth Encounter that was pretty much being a YARP on a national scale, with a musical focus. I was put onto one of the international teams, Kindred, and together with 4 other truly phenomenal human beings, and we led youth events at churches across the country, traveling in our big smurf-blue 15-passenger van. It was during my time with Kindred that I hit one of the first of my bottoms. I ended up leaving the team halfway through the year, and moving back in with my parents. It was also around this time that members of the church told me that I was a sinner because I was not heterosexual. I had failed in so many ways, and now, even the path of ministry was closed to me.

I’m going to fast-forward a bit now, because this is when I really started drinking, and later, taking pills, too. The chemicals that I put in my body were the medicine that I needed to keep myself alive. Therapy, prescribed mental health medications, none of this other stuff could silence the torturous messaging that I heard inside my own mind every day. I usually drank alone, with the intention of passing out so I could sleep. I drank this way for 15 years. I hit several bottoms during this time, including a dramatic increase in lying because I had to find ways to explain to people why I wasn’t okay. I did so many awful things. I stole from my parents and friends, I ghosted important life events of people who I loved, I lied constantly, and my self-hatred grew. I do want to mention here that there were wonderful things that happened in my life during this time. But the wrongness wouldn’t budge. I married the first person who indicated they would be down for that. He was, and is still, a good person, but from the beginning, our marriage was just another way I tried to convince myself that I was okay. My drinking reached a bottom that was worse than the way I felt about myself without it. I was taking pills when I could get them. I was drinking and using when I didn’t want to, because it felt like the only way to stay on this side of the dirt. I was drinking in public and making a fool of myself over and over. I was doing what I thought I had to do just to stay alive, even though my alcohol and drug use was killing me in a different way.

On February 1, 2015, I woke up after I shouldn’t have. I had taken a bottle of pills and followed them with a bottle of vodka. When I woke, I was instantly willing to go to any length to stop drinking. The cure I was using to treat my brokenness was worse than my wrongness, and how broken I felt. I had seen sobriety change the lives of people I knew, and even though I didn’t think it would work for me I was willing to give it a try. I thought that I could possibly stay sober, but even in my wildest dreams I didn’t think that I could be happy.

I haven’t had a drink, taken a drug, or used a medication outside of exactly how it is prescribed to me since that morning. I am a member of a well-known program that has taken my wrongness and revealed the truth – that it is in fact a disease that I was born with, and I am not weak or wrong for not being able to recover on my own. The miracle of my story is, I have recovered. My recovery is dependent on a number of things that I do, that have worked for millions of people around the world. My journey into long-term recovery has been difficult at times, but it has never been close to reaching the despair of my drinking days.

Let me tell you what my life is like now. I am married to the most amazing partner, someone who sees all of me, supports and loves me. I have two young nephews who call me Aunt Lala, who have never seen me drunk or high. I have found that who I am, is actually pretty flipping great. I rejoice in opportunities to be authentically myself, and I have friends that are my chosen family, in addition to my blood family, who see and support who I am. I am about to be a college graduate! I have a rich spiritual practice and an intimate relationship with my Higher Power, who I called God when I was younger and now call the Universe. On many nights when I tumble into bed, I fall asleep smiling. SMILING. I honor my victories and I learn from my mistakes (which I continue to make). I sing and dance with abandon, and no longer try to hide the things that make me unique. In turn, I am rewarded with relationships that contribute to daily joy, happiness and freedom of spirit. Hold on, though, because some of you might be surprised to find out I am still broken. That brokenness, the wrongness that I felt as a child, has become a bridge to freedom. It is a way to stop denying what I feel, and embrace the truth. Instead of trying to numb those feelings, I say hello, I sit down with them at a table in my imagination that is set with tea cups and flowers. I ask those feelings what they are here to teach me. I listen, and sometimes the Universe comes to sit with me at this table. Without being broken, I would have never found the life that I have today. 

I’d like to close this article by encouraging you to embrace your own brokenness. It is, in fact, a gift. You may not be someone who struggles with substance use, but we are all broken. To paraphrase the great Leonard Cohen, bless the things that break us open, because that is how the light gets in.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with substance use, you are not alone and there is another way to live. There are many resources available to you, and there are people you don’t even know yet who will love you until you can love yourself. If you need assistance finding these resources, contact the counseling center here on campus. If you have any questions about my own experience, you are welcome to send me an email at nava3@southwestern.edu.