Still Room for Hope

by Alisa Kaplan

  I started to remember how good it felt to be strong and fit, to be able to trust my body. My appetite, which had been practically nonexistent for years, returned. I was hungry, and food (even the food in rehab) tasted good. Within a few weeks, I had started to put on some badly needed weight. The face that looked back at me from the mirror was beginning to fill out.

  Working out was a good first step toward getting healthy. But it wasn’t until I started talking about the rape in rehab that my real recovery began.

  I’d never discussed the rape in any depth before, and I was never the one to bring it up. The case had been national and international news, and I’d been outed in my own community, so everyone I came into contact with there knew my story. I’d been in counseling for a while, but my therapist had refused to continue seeing me when I couldn’t stop using drugs. I had spent years talking to lawyers, of course, but not about my feelings. My boyfriends had been drug addicts, interested only in prurient details. In some kind of disgusting way, because the case had gotten so much attention, I was a little bit of a celebrity to them. What did I care if they were getting off on it, as long as they could give me some meth?

  Human beings process a lot by talking about the things that happen to them, and I hadn’t really talked about anything. I didn’t even keep a journal anymore. It was as if I had completely lost my voice.

  After a full month in rehab, you know the group of women you’re in there with at a level that’s hard to comprehend in the real world. We’d shared and overshared, and shared again. We knew things about each other that our own mothers and lovers would never learn. Still, I hadn’t told anyone that I had been raped. When asked at the beginning, I’d told the group simply that I’d gotten into drugs because I’d fallen in with the wrong crowd.

  Then, about a month in, in line for dinner one night, I tapped my counselor Tina’s shoulder.

  “You know that gang rape case that was in the news so much, a couple years back? The girl on the pool table?”

  She turned around to look at me, her big brown eyes solid and calm, and nodded.

  I took a deep breath. “That was me.”

  Tina knew already, of course. All of the counselors at the rehab did; it had been part of my intake form. But I hadn’t said it out loud to anyone yet.

  We filled our trays. Then Tina made a comment that was so simple, and so true, it stopped me in my tracks. She said, “That night is a big part of the reason you use. You need to stop trying to run from that, so you can stop letting what those guys did to you ruin your life.”

  That was a revelation to me. For three years, what had happened to me had been my identity. That was what I was, wasn’t I? A victim, a drug addict, the girl on the news. The rape had been my own genesis story—the place where my new life, the terrible one, had begun.

  But Tina was saying something different. She was telling me that those things didn’t have to be who I was. I could choose my own identity, make my own life, choose a new beginning for myself.

  It was a liberating concept, but it was also overwhelming. I sat with it for a while, but I was still so ashamed! A couple of days later, I expressed my frustration to Tina. I wanted a new life, a better one. But I felt stuck, like the women around me in rehab were progressing fast, while my own growth was stunted.

  “Maybe it’s because you haven’t been completely honest yet,” she suggested. “You’re still ashamed of what happened to you. You’ve seen how powerful it can be to speak your truth; you see it every time you stand up and say out loud that you’re a drug addict. Do you think that if you talked about what happened to you with the group, you might take some of the power back from your perpetrators? Could that be a way to get rid of some of this guilt and shame?”

  It was a radical suggestion to eliminate the stigma of rape by facing it head-on. And so the next night, sitting on the floor in a circle as we always did for our evening meeting, I told the group about that July night and everything that had come after.

  As I spoke, I kept my head down, tracing a pattern in the carpet with my finger because I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes. The room was completely silent except for my voice. When I finally looked up, every woman in the room was crying.

  It was as if a huge boulder had been rolled off my chest. Tina had been right; talking about it had taken some of the power out of it. Everyone hugged me. They asked questions, and I found, to my surprise, that I had no problems whatsoever answering them. I was learning that there was a lot of support and comfort and empathy to be had out there, as long as I wasn’t numb.

  With the help of the other women in the group, I could see that the way I’d been using drugs had been a way of punishing myself for what I still felt had been my fault. As I started to get feedback from the group, I began to see that I owed sobriety to myself for the courage I’d shown in testifying. I owed it to my family for their unwavering support and love. I owed it to every victim of sexual assault who can’t prosecute his or her assailant—and for every one who does, and then doesn’t receive justice.

  That night was a major breakthrough. But Tina was on guard, too, because she knew that once I started talking, I’d see that I’d never fully processed everything I’d lost. Clean, I could see the scope and breadth of what had happened to me. I’d lost the end of my childhood. I’d lost the person I’d been. There was a great deal to grieve before I could begin to heal.

  Chapter Eight

  Fake It Till You Make It

  Sobriety was frustrating. Some days, I’d take one step forward, only to fall two steps back the next.

  I couldn’t believe my progress wasn’t faster, more linear. All I could feel was impatience. Why didn’t I feel better? Why wasn’t I recovered? Why wasn’t I healed? I wasn’t using drugs anymore. Hadn’t that been the problem?

  My pastor likes to remind us that God’s plans for us don’t always coincide with the schedule we’ve set for ourselves. “Wait on God,” he says, and the first time I heard it I felt goosebumps raise up on my arms. It’s a truth I particularly need to be reminded of—so much so that I’ve written it on a piece of construction paper and taped it to the mirror above my dressing table. In my opinion, all of us could afford to meditate on the idea that God is always working in your life, although you and He may not be on the same schedule.

  I sure could have used that reminder in rehab, though it wouldn’t have meant anything to me yet. Because I wouldn’t find true confidence in my sobriety until I’d taken a vital next step: developing a relationship with God.

  I’d like to be able to tell you about my dramatic conversion moment. I wish I could tell you that, like Paul, I fell to the ground, blinded by the light. But there’s an expression in AA: Fake it till you make it. And that’s really how I began to become a Christian.

  Once I got serious about getting clean, I looked around me and I saw one thing: The women who were successful at sobriety had some kind of spirituality in place. Not all of them were Christians, and not everybody called their higher power “God.” But everyone in rehab who was making it work had turned their lives over to a power greater than they were. So I started doing what they did.

  They prayed, so I prayed. At the beginning, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. When I was younger, I’d had a sense of God, though I’d never prayed for anything more substantial than a good grade or for some cute boy to talk to me. Now that I was actively looking to have a relationship with Him, I couldn’t feel anything at all. Praying often felt like I was talking to myself, like a crazy person on the street. This is nuts, I’d think self-consciously as I was doing it. Of course, as it always does, the prayer eventually started to work on me and in me. Gradually, I began to feel someone was listening.

  In the same way that I’d love to have a dramatic conversion story to tell you, I’d love to tell you that when I started to pray for real, I immediately felt the peace that comes from choosing to walk with God.

  Unfortunately, that’s not w
hat happened. Instead, I got mad—really, really mad. Hopping mad. Livid. Enraged. Furious. So angry I could hardly think straight.

  Are you kidding me? I thought. “Let go and let God”? How could I trust Him? Why had He allowed this to happen to me? I’d been a good person, for the most part. I didn’t even litter! Okay, fine, the six months before the rape, I hadn’t exactly been living the best life. But I’d been sixteen years old—just a kid, for crying out loud! I hadn’t done anything that a lot of teenagers don’t do, and I hadn’t hurt anyone but myself.

  Wow, was I mad. I was mad at breakfast, mad at lunch, and mad at dinner. I spent a lot of those early prayers yelling at Him in my head. Where were you? Why didn’t you protect me? How am I supposed to trust You now?

  Then, of course, I’d flip back to my default mode: feeling guilty. Surely turning my life over to a higher power didn’t mean hollering and cursing at Him? I didn’t understand the rules of this praying business. Was I compromising my sobriety? Was I going to Hell for thinking this stuff?

  I didn’t realize yet that God wants us to wrestle with Him. I hadn’t yet read the story of Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” who God sends to Judah to warn the people of the destruction that is coming because of their sinful natures. Jeremiah suffers terribly there and questions God (sometimes straight-out raging at Him), accusing Him of deceit and blaming Him for his loneliness and humiliation. God, of course, never stops loving Jeremiah. He is steadfast and consistent, no matter what. I’m pretty sure now that bringing our heartbreak and disappointments to Him in prayer is part of walking with Him. But back then, I was truly frightened by my prayer-time rants. Was I burning my only bridge?

  When I told Tina I was questioning God, she nodded. She let me rail a little, and then she interrupted me. “It’s fine to be mad—at yourself, at your parents, at the guys, at God—whoever it is that you need to be mad at. But you still gotta do the footwork, Alisa. Your recovery? It’s on you. You have to work your steps, keep showing up.”

  Footwork was one of Tina’s favorite things to harp on: How we couldn’t expect to stay clean simply because we weren’t using at that moment. Bad things happened to everyone, but nobody was to blame for the situation we were in. If we wanted to stay clean, each one of us would have to take responsibility for where we had ended up. “You gotta show up, do the work,” she’d say, with a shrug and a shake of her head.

  Her comment made me mad all over again, but of course she was right.

  I thought of Tina recently when our pastor gave an entire sermon about “staying in.” Too often, he said, we look for a way out when things get tough. But whether it’s a marriage that’s lost some of its spark, a pledge to a charity that’s started to feel burdensome, or staying clean, we have to stay in.

  It’s not always easy. In fact, it can be incredibly, intensely difficult—as it was for Noah, for Moses, for David, for Job, for Paul. I believe that it’s okay to turn to God and tell Him how hard it is, to show Him that we’re struggling. But we can never forget that God has a plan for us, and that everything is happening the way it’s supposed to be happening, and in His good time.

  There’s that “waiting on God” idea again. Wait on God, walk with God, wrestle with God, struggle with God. Just don’t give up. No matter how hard the road gets, we have to remember that, and we have to stay in. I’ve come to see that Tina’s “footwork” is another way of saying that you have to stay in. You have to do the work.

  At some level, I knew my sobriety depended on this relationship I was growing with God, though I still didn’t like Him much of the time. So though I didn’t always feel like it, I kept doing the footwork: reading the Bible and praying. And sure enough, just as I was getting a little stronger physically with every workout, my faith also got a little stronger every day.

  It had always been important for me to connect with something bigger than myself. As Shirley knew when she was holding me in the backseat of my parents’ car before the second trial, I could never have testified if I hadn’t thought that what I was doing would make a difference for other women. I couldn’t have gotten clean without knowing how important it would be to my parents. My growing relationship with God put all those experiences into context and allowed me to feel that my connection to something bigger was real and permanent.

  There would be a lot of comfort for me in that, as soon as I was ready to receive it.

  I’ve said that I take responsibility for all of the terrible things I did when I was addicted to drugs, but it took a while to get there.

  Alcoholics Anonymous (and Narcotics Anonymous, its sister organization) is a twelve-step program. The fourth step requires the addict to “make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” And this fourth step has to be done with someone else. It’s not enough to sit in a room and quietly think about all the terrible stuff you’ve done in your life as an addict. You have to tell someone else.

  I can’t tell you how much fear this step triggered in me. I’d been anesthetized when I was doing all those terrible things, but the good girl I had been wasn’t so distant. When I was clean, thinking about everything I’d done made me feel sick to my core. I had to come to terms with all the disgusting things I’d done, to name them and own them, with no thick padding of drugs to protect me from the feelings? And then I had to come clean and tell someone else what I’d done? No way.

  As it was, there were some days where I felt I’d drown in my own guilt. I couldn’t see how wallowing around in all the horrible things I’d done was going to help, and so I procrastinated the fourth step as long as I could.

  Tina, however, was relentless. I’d written a phrase from group therapy at the top of the first page of my notebook, and she made me read it over and over: “I am responsible for a part in every relationship I’ve ever had, and I’ve played a part in whether that relationship succeeded or failed.” I must have read that sentence a hundred times, until one night those words revealed themselves to me.

  I felt hugely guilty. But feeling guilty wasn’t the same thing as taking responsibility. In fact, feeling guilty wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t helping me to heal, or making it possible for me to have a better relationship with my family, or motivating me to stay clean. It certainly wasn’t helping all the people I’d hurt. Feeling the tremendous weight of all that guilt made me feel like I was doing something when I wasn’t really doing a thing. It was just another feeling I had to numb with drugs.

  For a split second, I could imagine what my life would feel like if I could let go of all the resentment and hate I felt toward myself. It was as if the clouds had parted, and for a single moment I could see a better life: how much happier I’d be, how much more I’d be able to give to others. It was then that I began to understand the fourth step.

  What if I could take responsibility for everything I’d done? Could I then stop feeling guilty, and maybe even start forgiving myself?

  The possibility was tantalizing. I took a deep breath and sat down to my fearless moral inventory.

  I ended up writing all night. I filled the entire notebook. Paging through what I’d written as the sun came up was totally devastating. There were more than a hundred names on my list of people I had hurt: 112, to be exact. I handed the notebook to Tina before breakfast, and then buried my face in my hands.

  I met with my sponsor, Melissa, the next day—in a Starbucks, of all the places to do a fearless moral inventory. I knew her from meetings. She had a lot of years sober, and she’d patiently tolerated my doubts and impatience during those early days, when I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stick with the program at all. I’d often call her four or five times a day.

  At Starbucks, Melissa listened quietly and calmly as I went through all 112 people I’d hurt. When I was done, she held my hands and told me to make amends where I could. (I eventually did, but it took a couple of years.) Then she drove me back to rehab.

  Once again, Tina had been right. Just as it had helped me to tell my
story to the others in my group, taking inventory robbed my sins of their terrible power. I thought that detailing them would only confirm that I was the worst person on earth, but it actually gave me a tremendous amount of relief. I had looked at the ugliest, most selfish, venal parts of myself. Once I’d held myself accountable for what I’d done—and, in as many cases as I could, actually apologized to the person I’d done them to—I could start to let them go.

  A funny thing happened after I did my fourth step. At the beginning of my stay at rehab, I’d taken private pleasure in breaking some of their little rules. We weren’t allowed to wear our house shoes outside in the yard, for instance, but I’d sneak out for a smoke in my slippers. Similarly, there was a rule that we had to be showered and dressed at breakfast. I’d shower, but then I’d put my pajamas right back on, daring someone to call me out on it.

  After I did my inventory, I stopped breaking those rules. I can’t explain it, except to say that the joy went out of it. I found that it felt good to be accountable, to take responsibility for myself and my actions.

  As my graduation from rehab loomed, Tina started asking me about my victim impact statement.

  The guys were set to be sentenced in March 2006. At the sentencing, I would be able to confront Seth, Brian, and Jared with what they had done to me. Ideally, this would provide me with some emotional closure. I’d also be able to explain to the court exactly how the crime had affected me before the judge decided their sentence.