My Sponsor Told Me To Forgive Graciously
For the hour is certain to come
Transgender Grief
It’s hard to forgive someone when you hate them.
It’s even harder when you love them.
An invisible illness
I guess grief really is an illness that has to heal in stages. Transition taught me that. Just put in the work. Enjoy the process. The results will be what they will be.
But in the meantime…
My heart yearns for the people who hurt me. Those are the people who feel most familiar. Those are the people good medicine keeps me from indulging.
Those are the people from my family that I’ve written about at least once or twice (and understated at least a dozen times).
Those are the people I keep yearning for as surely as an addict yearns for a familiar hit long after they turned sober.
Sometimes, I’m afraid those people are coming for me.
But more often, I’m not afraid they’re coming for me.
Most often, I’m afraid they never will. Not after what I did.
What did I do?
One by one, I disconnected from my family.
One by one, my family disconnected from me.
I told the secrets my family’s frantic abuse covered up since I was a kid. We all went through it. They were the perpetrators, but they didn’t start that way. They were victims, too.
I try to remind myself about that every time my hate for them bubbles or bursts to the surface.
Every time I uncover a new memory, a new photograph, or a new email refreshing horrifying details of their abuse.
Every time I reconnect with a friend from those youngest years who remembers, who understands, who empathizes with what it was like to be surrounded by people who were eager to normalize pedophilia, grooming, and sexual assault.
Every time I feel that hate, I remind myself…
Perpetrators aren’t born that way
My brother, for example, was groomed to be a predator.
Whereas I, for example, was groomed to be prey.
We were both abused. We’re both still healing from that invisible illness.
The dysfunction we grew up with dug its claws into us so deeply, that we forgot what it was like not to carry that burden.
When each monster gave us a brief absence, we felt a phantom pain so persistent, that the claws may as well still be sunk into our skin.
We took on behaviors that helped us survive the best way we knew how.
We became the person who thrived with the pain and from the pain.
We integrated survival traits so deeply into our souls that we forgot what it was like not to carry that burden.
We taught others how to survive as we once had.
We unknowingly became the very perpetrators of the cycle we were once pulled into and have ever since dreamed of having enough power to escape.
Counting the days
These days, my dad is in a nursing home. The dementia will eventually take anything he might remember. So for better or worse, I spoke to him one last time. I hope he makes peace with all that’s behind him.
My mom is in my heart because she’s already passed. I wrote back in 2013 in her obituary what I hoped for her before she died — and what she told me she’d found before we watched her go.
My older sister is relocating again back to her home state where I hope she finds comfort and community for the road ahead. She deserves however many moments of health and wholeness she has yet to discover.
My twin brother continues to use new names, multiple genders, and anthropomorphized avatars here there and everywhere else online to keep doing what I guess he has been doing since forever. Some of his fake identities go back over a decade. I hope his path one day brings him even a second of vulnerability, authenticity, and wholehearted living, but the wiser part of me accepts that what I want may never be right for him.
And as for me…
Everyone has to find their own path to wholeness.
I found my path within twelve-step programs. First with a generous AA sponsor who worked the ACA steps with me as best they could, then actual Adult Children of Alcoholics sponsors, and now a new circle in the fellowship of Co-dependents Anonymous/CODA.
Those programs taught me to recognize the truth within me.
The truth within me is this.
My sick family corrupted my thinking.
I don’t just mean my mom and dad. I also mean the chosen family I brought into my life, too. The ones I thought were empowering me but were actually trapping me in an even worse cycle of abuse.
As kids, we can’t escape that cycle. It’s all we know. We have no choice but to relate to the world around us. I hoped to make that world better, not to escape it entirely.
That’s the newest truth CODA has given me.
Congratulations, you played yourself
Co-dependent people aren’t always addicted to the same drug, but we are addicted to helping each other get our next fix. Empowering the other person empowers ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle that feels right, healthy, and sustainable.
You just have to remember that not all drugs look like flowers and powders. Emotions, for example, can be just as powerful a drug as heroin. For some people, that’s the entire reason they use heroin in the first place.
They like how it makes them feel. If they could get that feeling from a hug, they’d just as quickly go on a fatal hugging spree.
For me, that’s not a joke
On occasion, I called my addiction romance.
But romance isn’t the sickness. I chose addicts as partners.
Most often, I didn’t call that sickness romance. Most often, I called that sickness my brother.
But he’s not the sickness. He’s as much a victim as I was.
Other times, I called that sickness my sister.
But she’s not the sickness. She didn’t ask to be hurt like that, either.
The abuse the three of us suffered as kids were beyond our control. Is the healing the three of us have yet to find any different?
The gratitude to accept what I cannot change
Grant me the serenity to accept the people I can change, the courage to change the people I can, and the wisdom to know the only person I can change is ME.
That’s a paraphrased version of the ACA prayer. It’s just a little different than the AA Serenity Prayer.
When I found recovery in twelve-step programs, I found that I could show up for myself in the ways I’d forever longed someone else would.
I learned that making my happiness depend on someone else’s wasn’t empathy and compassion. It was the definition of co-dependence.
I learned that my brother might never get better. He might always instinctively reach for self-empowerment through abusing and ridiculing anyone he doesn’t like (and gods spare you if he feels like you actually wronged him).
I learned he might always live in denial of the harmful and abusive impact of how he treats women.
I learned that trying to be good enough for him not to abuse me the same way he has abused so many other women is a lost cause.
I learned that my sister is an addict, and an addict is never satisfied.
I learned that my sister might never have “enough” to stop using anyone around her as her next potential fix.
I learned that my mission to help my family find the ultimate fix was never going to make them suddenly available for me, too.
I learned that happiness can’t be defined by whether an addict has enough of what they need.
I learned that an addict never has enough — whether that addict is another person or just me, a different kind of addict, the kind who was addicted to trying to be the one who could satisfy the insatiable.
I learned that chasing that kind of happiness would either kill me or turn me into a different kind of abuser. Hurt people hurt people, you know. Victims of abuse are no different.
I learned that as much as that chase used to wake me up with purpose, ambition, and the certainty that there was at least one person in this world I loved enough to give up everything for if only it would make them whole —
— the way forward to healing and wholeness must always make room for me too.
I learned that if I can get better, so can the rest of my family.
I learned that even if they don’t, I’ll still be okay.
I learned that if there is hope, there is forgiveness. And now that I have hope, I can hold strong to the other one, too.
