Revealing the Roots of Behaviors and Addictions

I Feel Brave

I think I can say the worst things out loud — Day 11

If there’s something inside that you wanna say,

Say it out loud, it’ll be okay.

I will be your light.

Dry the Rain, Beta Band, 1999

Dryuary Day 11

I didn’t put alcohol down eleven days ago and suddenly have this miraculous event. I’ve been healing in pieces and parts for years.

You know, I thought this journey was going to be about sweating and constantly eating pretzels to mitigate the shakes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Physically, I feel good. I’m not sleeping alot, but I’m sleeping well.

I wake up everyday with no hangover, no tiredness, and no regrets. Exercise has alleviated my stiffness and back pain. Yesterday, I had to bend way down under a couch to retrieve a rolling ornament. It didn’t even hurt, and I popped right back up with no problems.

My brain; however, is cleaning house. All the bubbles and feathers, the secrets and the photographs, the silent tears, fire and mirrors have somehow broken their moorings under the stones of the river and floated right up to my crown. They bob around in my frontal lobe at every waking moment.

I feel brave. My voice isn’t choking on bile anymore. I woke up this morning and sat next to Anthony on the bed. He was sipping coffee and tapping on his tablet. I watched his eyes peel back and forth, his chest rise and fall.

“I’m a survivor of child sexual abuse.”

The tapping stopped. I mean, he knew these things to some degree already.

He knew, right?

But I had never projected like this before, never looked him straight in the face before, said it sober before. Nonetheless, my throat constricted.

“There are two that I remember, a third predator who tried to groom me….” I trailed off, the tears flooding, my throat…..my throat. “And I’m saying this because I understand now. I remember everything, and now I understand.”

He took my hand, his eyes were now locked on me.

“Who were they? What were there names?”

In middle school, a couple of times during the year, the administration would hire a DJ and have a dance. The gym became a pulsing cave of lights and music and everything not school. We broke out and showed our best moves and did silly dances like the Cotton Eyed Joe.

During the slow dances, all of us who had no partners got to tool around for four minutes acting like we didn’t care.

I was near the DJ booth under the fog and the red gel lights. All the wires and blinking switches ran down the length of two cafeteria tables. A shadow passed through my periphery, and I saw the DJ motioning to me. I came behind the “booth”, and I got to sit up on the table among all the equipment set up like city blocks. I didn’t care about all the pretty, swooning slow dancers anymore. I was in the most important place in the house, with a cheerful man who wanted to talk to me.

Me.

I can see the black threads that trace my steps that night. I had worn my coolest clothes, but they couldn’t dress up my frizzed hair and smallish, pointy face and tiny eyes behind glasses which could’ve been used to set ants on fire. I had danced around along the folded bleachers which still managed to create nooks for people to make out. As per normal, I became despondent and lonely, and Brent Green (sp.?) came to the rescue. He gave me his bright cheer and a seat with a view, and he didn’t mind that I wasn’t pretty because I was so much more than that.

In the dark and the fog and the thumping music, he smiled a lot and asked me questions about me. In the light of day, he sent lengthy letters to my parents’ house for weeks. I felt glittery when one came in the mail. It was like winning a contest.

My parents intercepted one. I never heard from him again. I found out years later that there had been a quiet phone call, and that was that. My parents never spoke to me about it. Child sexual abuse was not a topic. Anywhere. Nipping it in the bud was their only job, and they had done that.

I was in my forties before I fully remembered Brent, and I took some time to gaze upon my tiny, helpless, twelve-year-old self who jumped right into his web.

This was the first time a predator had tried to groom me.

You would think I would have recognized it the second time around.

Only a few months later.

I watch myself from above, so ill-equipped, so willing to take affection from anyone. I will lose, and I hear a nauseating crash as a future, possible me plummets away from normal and safe. A part of me began to die the day I believed a stranger would set me free.

And when it came time to need some facet of my soul to make a right decision, I would reach in and only find burnt scraps, for the parts bestowed on me to walk with fortitude had all fallen a thousand feet to their deaths. The only option was to walk alongside my own ghost, fleeting and transparent, a mongrel who couldn’t be trusted.

I understand now that their names don’t matter, that even the sexual abuse doesn’t matter. This is me now, this is all about me. I was catapulted through my teen and into my adult years as a victim. My actions, my numbness….my propensity to be warming the bench in the context of my own marriage.

This is over. I sat in front of my husband of twenty-two years and said it out loud because I am ready for all of it to leave me, to break the tethers and float away, to protect my decisions and dreams under my own wing.

The seas are so calm now. There is no ‘what now?’ There is only what is.

To be clear, I didn’t put alcohol down eleven days ago and suddenly have this miraculous event. I’ve been healing in pieces and parts for years — one foot in the placid water, the other on fire. This has been a long time coming. This morning, I just saw very clearly for the first time.

I am a survivor of child sexual abuse, and it doesn’t control me anymore. No one has to pay for this anymore. I am no longer in debt to the Sandman.

In 25 days, I will celebrate my 50th birthday. These shifts, these doors that open and close, they always seem to happen right on time. And though I have been moored at the bottom of the sea, I am now in free rise, and floating up through waters that will buoy me to the surface.

And I can tread water for a long-ass time.

Josie Elbiry, January 2021

I am so happy that you have joined me. Thank you for reading Day 11.

To catch up on Days 1–10, you can click here: