Walking Wounded

Lately, I’ve been stuck in an endless loop of unanswerable questions in my head.

What goes beyond just ‘not drinking’? 

What do I do with all this shit I’ve learned about myself in sobriety?

And these wounds bleeding out in the open? 

I could give a flying F about drinking right now… how do I make the hurting stop?

Then I learned that sometimes… Hurting is a choice.

I was barely a teenager when I first dreamt of a burned one-room cabin in the eery darkness of dense woods at night. The missing windows framed the flames that glowed with warning from behind the structure… as if giving me a moment to decide what to do.

I was running sure-footed across the forest floor, staring towards the open doorway of the cabin and the charred remains inside. In the center of the room, I find a young girl huddled with her head down and pudgy hands pulling her knees tight to her trembling body. Blonde curls tumble over her face, obscuring her identity. But I know her. I love her and my sole mission is to protect her. 

I’m fierce and strong in a black trench coat and leather pants, crossing the room swiftly in my scarred boots to wrap her in my arms. My younger sister. Wrapped tightly under my arm, safely shielded by my duster as I raise my eyes to find our escape.

And then I’d wake up. Breathless. Sweaty. Sheets in knots. Year after year, the same dream would visit at random and play out the same way. Ending the moment I prepared for us to flee. But I never called it a nightmare. I’ve always thought it was that part of me that fell in love with Lulu the first time I saw her smile. 

When the dream returned to me this year, however, it changed for the very first time in 30 years.

I had found a guided meditation on the Insight Timer app one day geared toward ‘connecting to the spirits in our lives’. Feeling quite disconnected that day, I put in my earbuds and cozied up on my favorite blanket with candles and incense. 

During the meditation, I pulled up old memories of my grandmothers who sometimes sneak into my heart to remind me they’re still here with me. My mother-in-law whose spirit I feel when I’m baking. Warmth and comfort enveloped me as I remembered adventures with friends who left us too soon. 

Sudden flashes of flames against blackness.

I closed my eyes tighter and shook at the thought in my head, trying to regain my focus. The sounds of running in my ears. Fast breaths. The cabin.

Why are we here? Get out of my head! I open my eyes and ended the meditation. Little did I know I opened the wrong door. Or did I?

Suddenly, when those moments of shame from my drinking years appeared to me throughout the day (which used to be excruciatingly often in the first years of sobriety), the cabin dream tagged along. No longer just a vision in the quiet of night that woke me from sleep, the sprint into the cabin was now chasing visions of me pissing in front of crowds at a festival or the memories of mixing booze and Benadryl. 

It was confusing and disorienting like my brain had split into two chunks and was trying to double the onslaught of personal trauma I had to relive each day. I’d try to shake it off and refocus, but it kept repeating. Repeating, until I chose NOT to shake it off and instead watched it play out.

I was washing a few pots and pans at the kitchen sink when I felt him again. The manager that stalked me in high school. I felt my skin crawl as the fear rose from my toes and crawled up my bones. Frozen a moment until my mind shifted and I was in the darkness. I could hear the running footsteps, the crackling of the fire.

I ran into the burning cabin and found myself. Seventeen years old, cowering on hands and knees at work. Waiting to be saved. 

I felt the pain and terror rippling from my younger self before me. Realizing who I was in that moment… how I watched through the eyes of this warrior who charged into danger… long fiery hair, no fear in her eyes… I focused every bit of my mind into dragging his sorry ass into this charred prison with us. I stood between them, his venom trembling from his lips as I stared him down.

I screamed all the things that should have been screamed at him that day. Destroyed his power by calling out his abuse. Ruined his ugly face with my powerful fists. All fueled by an endless well of anger I’d dragged around for decades. Until he was motionless. Beaten. Nothing. 

Safe, I turned to that broken memory of me, Young Kristy. I knelt next to her and pulled her close, careful of her shattered heart. I held that girl on the floor until I could no longer tell us apart. 

I felt it until I opened my eyes (in the vision) and somehow I was now seeing through the eyes of Young Me. I could feel the arms, and warmth and care enveloping me. 

Then it dawned on me. She was the one I had needed in that moment in my life. She had righted the wrong that could never be avenged. She destroyed my abuser and I knew she was never going to leave my side again.

Since then, as those regrets and moments of shame return to haunt me in my day, I invite my inner warrior into the memory to rewrite history and help me heal another wound.

She was me. IS me, and realized I have become everything I’ve needed to defend the broken parts of me that I’ve carried day to day. I’ve walked through this world as a wounded woman (as so many of us do) thinking I had to keep pushing through the pain. “Compartmentalize the trauma, Kristy”. Forced to believe that life will hurt you and you just hide the scars to survive. 

But the truth is, the wounds you neglect never heal. It continues to bleed whether we look at it or not, continues to fester and poison healthy tissue nearby. But what if we could CHOOSE to face the gashes, to treat the wounds and honor the scars. What if we helped that scar tissue form so we can look back on it, honor our survival so we can move forward as a warrior again.

Now, I call my inner warrior Vasa. Short for Vasalisa, one of my favorite ladies of legend I learned of reading Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés! (Seriously, go read it!)

If you or someone you love are struggling with alcohol or an important change in their/your life… find a way to choose YOU over booze, over an ex, over beating yourself up. And do it again and again. Choose to heal. Over and over, until it becomes a part of you. Even if you have to give a piece of you a new identity to do the dirty work (“Get ‘em, Vasa!”). You can do it. You got this!

Regarding my younger selves I’ve reconnected with…

I hold, love, and have witnessed them without judgment. Rather than leaving them in the memory, alone yet again, I pulled each one into the present, welcoming them Home. Acknowledging who they were, all a part of me, so I could be the expression of everything I’m meant to or desire to be. They’ve since become a Counsel of Kristy’s, and that’s a team I can thrive with (and a story for another day).

As I walk through these odd, difficult days called Life, I find peace in knowing the fierce warrior inside who will always fight for me. That I will always fight for me. Choose Me. Over and over again. 

Skipping through life with scars, 

Kristy Kreme