The story within the story

Disclaimer: I decided to do a mini-series of sorts about my reactions to the things I am learning while volunteering at a crisis center. This is also motivated by the upcoming one-year mark of when I closed a particularly painful chapter in my life, and when my name change was declared legal.

The question is this: What would you do if someone you were in a relationship with was hurting or severely disrespecting you? How would you react?

It’s an impossible scenario for most of us. Who wants to consider such an awful breach of trust? How can we really know how we’d react until, God forbid, it actually happens?

I thought I knew my answer. I simply wouldn’t stand for it. I’d fight like hell. I’d end the relationship. I’d do anything but be passive and compliant. Doing nothing, I rationalized, is like enabling the bad behavior. And I sure as hell would not enable such blatant disrespect, especially when the woman being disrespected was my own self.

I was seventeen at the time I thought I knew everything (but what seventeen-year-old doesn’t think that?). And that’s what I was so sure I would do if the situation happened to me.

But, as hindsight likes to remind me, I was too young to assume such things.

Can I say why it took so long for me to stand up for myself? Not really. There are many reasons, some that make sense, and others that don’t. But that’s hardly the point. What matters now is that I am wiser and less judgmental for having experienced something I put down untold scores of women for. When I look into the hurting faces of future clients, I may see traces of Sarah in them…and I’ll have to remember that the little hurting Sarah is what helped create the Sarahbeth I felt called to be after my baptism. The two are inseparable, much to my chagrin. But that is the truth.

What does it feel like to have hindsight bite you in the butt for failing to notice things that were so obvious to others, but easily excusable to you? It’s something like this…it’s like going through the motions of everyday life in a zombified state. It’s like having outbursts of anger for what seems like no apparent reason, for even the smallest of offenses. It’s like forgetting how to be your once cheerful, perky self, and having to re-learn basic social skills when mingling with new people (especially if those people are customers at your job). It takes a while to re-learn all those basic skills. But it does happen.

What does it feel like to re-learn your true identity after feeling like the one you were born with wasn’t good enough? It’s like comparing yourselves to other people you admire, people you wish you could be like, only to find out that they have struggles too, and maybe they’re comparing themselves to you because for some odd reason, they think you’re the one who has it all together. It’s like begging for compliments to remind yourself of what you’re good at, but over time you remember why it is that people seem to love you, to trust you, and call you their friend. It’s like throwing yourself into serving the needs of others to bring some glory, however small, into this piece of hell that will – yes, it will! – get a little smaller with every passing day. 

You can’t ever know how you’ll react to something until it actually happens to you. It doesn’t help to speculate over what ifs. But it helps to be prepared. Being prepared is to know that anything that happens to you doesn’t have to leave you broken. It just leaves you with a story to tell.