Still Room for Hope

by Alisa Kaplan

  Ways the crime had impacted me? I sure wasn’t short on material. But as soon as I put pen to paper, I found myself freezing up. I couldn’t write it. Not even a little of it. Finally, Tina told me that writing my statement was a condition of graduating from rehab.

  “I can keep you here another month on a county bed,” she told me. “I’m the one who signs your release, and I’m not signing anything to let you out of here until you read that statement to me.”

  She was bullying me, but once again she was right. It wasn’t a great idea to have me out there on my own, brand-spanking-newly clean, and rehashing all the ways that being raped had screwed up my life. If I had to do that, Tina wanted me to do it in a safe, controlled space, where I was surrounded by clean and sober people and all the support I’d need to get through it.

  On October 21, 2005, I got a day pass from rehab so that I could go to the DA’s office to practice reading my victim impact statement.

  Reading those words aloud had a devastating effect on me, so I took care of myself. The first person I called after we got out of there was my sponsor. And right after I read my statement, my parents drove me back to rehab.

  I have a copy of that statement in front of me as I write this. At the time, I thought it was a document of healing, but it is crystal clear to me now how sad and broken and lonely I was. Reading it now breaks my heart; I have nothing but compassion for that girl. And that’s truly what I was, even three years after the assault: a child.

  I was released from rehab on my eighty-ninth day, right before Thanksgiving. And on Thanksgiving Day, 2005, I gave the photograph of the two of us back to my dad. He had tears in his eyes when he saw what I’d given him, but he also told me that he’d never lost hope that I would.

  Chapter Nine

  A False Start

  It’s good that I’m stubborn and a fighter by nature, because I did not have an easy time in the years that followed.

  On March 10, 2006, almost a year after they were convicted, and almost four years after the assault, Seth, Jared, and Brian were sentenced to six years in prison, with allowances for time served. Most importantly to me, the judge ruled that they’d have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. They wouldn’t be able to get away with doing this to another girl.

  Judge Briseno expressed concern about the defendants’ lack of remorse after the fact, and was outspoken in his opinion about their behavior during the crime itself. “Their intent was to degrade the victim,” he said, and there was disgust in his voice.

  That was good to hear. Still, it was a deeply bittersweet moment. The allowance for time served meant that the men who assaulted and hurt me would each do less than three years in prison if they served their full term. It also meant that they’d already served much of their sentence in the much-cushier county jail, as opposed to state prison.

  My lawyers were disappointed by the length of the sentence. I was disappointed, too, until unbidden, the thought came to me: “That’s not for me to judge. God will take care of this.” It was the first time I’d truly been able to turn something over to Him.

  It might not have been the justice I wanted, but unlike a lot of women, at least I’d gotten some.

  As we walked out of the courtroom, Shirley put her arm around me and stroked my hair. She was disappointed about the sentencing, like everyone else. But as always, Shirley had her eye on a bigger prize.

  “Look what else God has given you,” she whispered.

  She was right. By the sentencing, I was six months clean and living with my parents.

  I had gotten a good job as a buyer’s assistant at a trendy clothing company. I had started college. I had a community of women friends to go to meetings with when we weren’t out shopping or at the movies. My mom was talking to me again, although our relationship was still slightly strained. My hair was washed, and there was polish on my nails.

  A lot of the people who’d known me at the height of my drug use showed up for the sentencing. Tiare was there. Chuck Middleton was there, obviously, and so was Susan Schroeder. Every single one of them made a huge fuss about how healthy and strong I looked. It was then that I realized that most of the people who had worked on my case had taken it for granted that my drug use would eventually kill me.

  It’s funny what you don’t allow yourself to see. For instance, it wasn’t until I started writing this book that I came to understand how closely my drug use shadowed what happened to me: I started using drugs right after the rape and was clean—however newly—almost four years and two trials later, for the sentencing of the men who had assaulted me.

  Shirley was right. No matter what sentence had been handed down, I was clean and healthy.

  It was a beginning, but it wouldn’t be enough.

  In AA we say that someone is “sober without recovery,” or a “dry drunk.” Recovering drug addicts have a similar expression: “Getting clean is only the beginning.” Any of those would have been a pretty good description of my condition after getting out of rehab. I was going to meetings and had a community of sober acquaintances, but I wasn’t seeing a counselor or getting any kind of formal help. My emotions were completely out of control—that was clear, even to me. Still, I thought I was the only rape victim who felt the way I did.

  After I got out of rehab, I found myself face-to-face with everything I had spent so long pushing away. All the feelings I hadn’t allowed myself to feel while I was using were right where I’d left them, three long years before. I hadn’t done anywhere near the work I had to do to deal with the trauma of the assault and the trials. I had yet to grieve my lost adolescence and the woman that I might have been. But I didn’t want to do any of that. So I turned once again to my old friend: sleep.

  I should have been grateful for my sobriety, but all I could see was everything I was missing. I spent my twenty-first birthday at an AA meeting. A lot of people would say that’s a success story. But at the time, it only served to highlight everything I felt I was missing. Everybody else got to go party in Vegas, and I was sitting in a dank church basement with a bunch of alcoholics and drug addicts, nursing a cup of cold coffee.

  I’d fallen very far behind. While I’d been selling drugs and sleeping on a couch behind a McDonald’s, my peers had been dating and making friends, sitting in classes, learning about themselves and the world. Women my age were starting their real lives: They were settling down with partners, moving into their own apartments, beginning to establish themselves in the careers they’d chosen. By contrast, I was living with my parents and taking freshman review courses, relearning how to be a normal person in the world.

  Nor was I likely to catch up anytime soon. Like many rape victims, I had massive trust issues, which meant it was hard for me to make new friends, let alone to date. I had no idea what I wanted to study at college or what I wanted to do with my life. All those baby steps you take during those interim years of late adolescence—the internships and entry-level jobs, the late-night conversations with your friends where you try on different hopes and dreams for size—I hadn’t done any of that. I didn’t even have hobbies. My hobby had been meth.

  My relationship with God was an early casualty. In rehab, there were lots of people to worship with. There was always a pop-up prayer group in a quiet corner of the garden or someone holding an impromptu Bible study session in the back of the TV room. Away from rehab, I didn’t have any context for my relationship with God. (It didn’t occur to me to find a church.) A few months into my sobriety, I stopped reading my Bible, and my prayers became less frequent.

  Once again, Tina had been right: I hadn’t done the footwork, and so my sobriety was on shaky ground.

  My perpetrators had been sentenced, but the case was still in the news almost every day. The lead defense attorney for the first trial had his license to practice law suspended after getting caught making deals with local bail bond agents. Seth’s dad was caught cheating on his taxes. He escaped jail time by wearing a wire to hel
p officials catch the sheriff, once his friend, who was accused of using his office for personal gain and of trying to derail a grand jury investigation. (He was convicted of witness tampering and sentenced to sixty-six months in federal prison.)

  We’d pulled at a string, and the whole weave was starting to unravel. It wasn’t a huge surprise to learn that these people were involved in illegal or immoral affairs. But these were massive scandals in our area, and every article about it referenced my case.

  So much for moving on.

  Then, in 2007, I started seeing someone. His name was Allen. I’d known him for a long time. He was impressive. He was as stubborn as I was, but he was dedicating his ferocious work ethic to living a full and amazing life. He was putting himself through culinary school and working two jobs to support himself as well as his mom when she needed help. In his spare time, he cooked at a soup kitchen. Unlike pretty much everyone else I’d ever dated, Allen was a decent person, a seriously good person, working hard to do the right thing. I fell for him hard.

  He was also young. Hanging out with him made me feel like a kid again. I longed for all the carefree years I’d missed, and during the two years I spent with Allen, I made an effort to recapture that feeling.

  But the truth was that nothing in my life—including my relationship with Allen—was really working. At heart, I wasn’t happy or peaceful.

  In December 2008, I moved into my own condominium, a couple of miles away from the house I grew up in. It was an important step toward independence, but I was desperately lonely there. I’d gotten a new job, too, working as a medical assistant. I was okay at work as long as I was busy, but if it got slow, I crashed emotionally. It was a job, not a career, anyway. I didn’t want to work in the medical field, although I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to study at school.

  My life looked good on paper. But if I was on the right path, then why did everything feel so empty?

  My control issues spiraled. Rape is about control, not sex, and victims often struggle with a need to regain some of the control they feel was taken from them. This can lead to a lot of anxiety and some very unhealthy behaviors.

  I was no exception. Any tiny change to a previously scheduled plan would send me into a complete frenzy. If I had plans to see a movie with my parents, and they told me on Wednesday that they wanted to do it Saturday night instead of Friday, I’d freak out. Not because I had plans on Saturday, but because our plans were set in my head for Friday. When I left home in the morning for work, I had to wait to make sure my garage door was completely closed. If I didn’t, I’d find myself driving around the block to check it. On the few occasions I was able to calm my anxiety enough to go to work without checking, I’d spend the morning in a state of unbearable anxiety—and as soon as my lunch break started, I’d run to my car and drive home to make sure it was closed.

  My employers loved me because I spent hours maniacally labeling every file and storage container in the office. Every insurance vendor, every different kind of patient form and chart had its own spot and its own label, so that a temp could sit down and immediately know where everything was. That kind of neurosis might have been great for my employers, but it was not so good for me. A form filed in the wrong place would send me into a spiral, and every three months, I’d stay late into the night, hours after everyone else had gone home to their families, cleaning and organizing the whole office.

  At home, I set my clothes out every night for the next day. It’s good to be organized and to plan ahead, right? But I would do it if I came home so tired I could barely stand. Running a 104-degree fever, I would stagger around my room to set out the next day’s outfit, complete with jewelry and complementary eyeshadow colors. What if I couldn’t? There was no such thing as “couldn’t”—if I didn’t do it, I didn’t sleep. It was a pretty dramatic turnaround from the teenaged girl who’d planned to put the license plate IMPLSIV on her car.

  The anxiety grew unbearable, and I couldn’t tamp it down, no matter how many controlling coping mechanisms I indulged in. The more I indulged in my compulsions, the worse they seemed to get. Driving home to check that garage door didn’t scratch the itch in any permanent way; it just irritated the condition.

  So I started drinking again—socially, I told myself, ignoring what I knew, which is that alcoholics and addicts can’t drink socially. First it was a beer on the weekends. Then it was a beer when I got home from work. Then it was more beers, and some weed on the weekends. It wasn’t long before I was back to my old ways, drinking and using drugs to find oblivion. I made the choice never to do meth again, but it sure wasn’t clean and sober living.

  I felt indescribable shame when I relapsed. My parents had been so thrilled with my sobriety that they practically burst with pride whenever they saw me. It was many years before I could tell them.

  I stopped going to AA and NA meetings. A meeting was exactly where I needed to be, of course, but I was too disgusted with myself to go. How could I tell everyone in my sober community that I’d started drinking and doing drugs again?

  And the tentative relationship that I’d begun to build with God in rehab fell right to pieces. Instead of turning to Him and asking for help, I thought, Who am I to have a relationship with God? In my own eyes, I was a weak, lying piece of garbage. I’d disappointed everyone in my life, and the one good thing I’d ever done—getting clean—hadn’t lasted. Why would He want anything to do with me? It was like dating in high school. I rejected Him before He could reject me.

  Not surprisingly, Allen and I began to have problems. He was young and not sure he was ready yet for a long-term relationship. But the bigger issue was that he could see what I couldn’t, which was that I hadn’t done the work to get my life back. He loved me, but he could see it wouldn’t be enough if I didn’t love myself.

  One night at the end of 2008, I got drunk, and Allen and I had a huge fight. We ended up in the parking lot of a Home Depot at two o’clock in the morning, screaming at each other. I got so mad, I hit him. Then I hit him again. I threw myself at him, clawing at his chest with my nails until his shirt was hanging in tatters right off him. He didn’t even push me back, which enraged me more, so I gathered myself and then slammed him as hard as I possibly could against the cement wall, knocking the wind right out of him and splitting open his head.

  The sound of his head hitting the bricks and the sight of that streak of blood, so vivid against the orange wall, were unforgettable. Sickened by what I’d done, I realized that after years of being in abusive relationships, I’d become the abuser. Allen broke up with me that night, and he was right to do it. And then I was left alone with myself.

  When I was crawling around on my knees in that roach-infested drug house before I went to rehab, I’d had the clarity to tell God that I knew I couldn’t do my life by myself. “Please, God, help,” I’d said. “I can’t do it by myself, God. If I continue to control my own life, I’m going to die.”

  I meant it at the time, but I had no idea what it meant to let God have dominion in my life, to let Him into the dark corners.

  I was white-knuckling it, thinking I could do it all myself. But of course I couldn’t. None of us can. Because I was clean, I thought I was in charge. What resulted is what always happens when we think we’re in charge of our own lives instead of handing the reins over to Him, namely chaos and destruction.

  There wasn’t any order, any depth, or true meaning to my days, because I had not let Him in. I wasn’t praying in a real way or declaring my relationship with Him to myself and others. I wasn’t dedicating my life to serving others in His name. And there’s only so long you can tread water like that.

  I didn’t get clean after that night with Allen, but one particularly bad night months later served as a wake-up call for me. Afterward, I had a long talk with my best friend, Katie. She told me how scared she was for me and reminded me of how much I was loved. It’s something she tells me often, to this day. But her words had a particular impact on me that day:
I heard her.

  It took a little while, but, once again (and for the last time, God willing), I got clean.

  I’ve been asked a lot why I think I was able to get (and stay) clean that last time. For years, I didn’t have a good answer. Then, in one of his sermons, my pastor differentiated between two kinds of sins: sinning out of weakness, and sinning out of willfulness.

  That made sense to me. In the first years of my drug use after the rape, I was chasing Satan. I wanted annihilation, obliteration, destruction. I was searching out pain and violence, for myself and others.

  It’s true that when I fell back into drugs and alcohol after graduating from inpatient rehab, I did fall, and I did fail. But in those early, unsteady years, I was honestly trying to find a better way. When I started drinking and doing drugs again after rehab, I wasn’t trying to punish myself or the world, or express rage at having my control taken away. I was just lost. I didn’t know how to do better, but I wanted to. That, I think, is why God got underneath me and lifted me up.

  As I’d already figured out, simply cleaning up didn’t get rid of any of the underlying issues. My life still felt flat, without texture or meaning. I slept more and more, always a sign of depression for me. I’d be doing laundry or driving to work, and I’d think, Is this all there is? There has to be more to it than this.

  God was listening then, too.

  Chapter Ten

  Praise You in the Storm

  One day at the end of 2010, I was at my parents’ house for dinner. I was helping my mom in the kitchen afterward, and she startled me with a question: Did I have any interest in going with her to a few churches in the area, to see if any of them were a good fit?

  Unbeknownst to me, my mother had begun to renew her own faith. She’d always felt close to God, but she was beginning to realize that she wanted—needed—more. She had come to feel that she needed church in her life, a home base where she could delve deeper into her relationship with God and become part of a larger community of people doing the same.