Turns Out, Healing Has Trapdoors

This is what sacred looks like when I get to choose.

I’m so fucking tired of having to explain why no means no.

Not “convince me.”

Not “find a way around it.”

Not “try again later.”

Not “let me make it easier for you.”

Not “let me explain why you shouldn't feel this way.”

Just fucking no.

Today I learned something about myself that I really wish I could’ve learned gently.

I learned that there are still things buried inside me that can reach up and grab me by the throat before my logical brain even knows what the fuck is happening.

I logged into church this morning.

A Unitarian Universalist church.

A place I genuinely thought was safe for someone like me. A place I thought existed outside of the religious framework that hurt me. A place where I thought I could show up as exactly who I am, with my weird little witch heart and my complicated relationship with spirituality and religion and God and all the shit I’ve spent years untangling.

And then they started singing a hymn.

That was it.

A fucking hymn.

Maybe that sounds ridiculous to somebody else.

It wasn’t ridiculous inside my body.

My body knew that sound before my brain had time to explain it.

Suddenly I wasn’t sitting safely in my own home watching a church service through a screen.

I was somewhere else.

Somewhere old.

Somewhere I don’t fucking go anymore.

And I logged out.

Immediately.

I didn’t sit there and prove I could tolerate it.

I didn’t make myself uncomfortable because maybe I was being dramatic.

I didn’t tell myself to stop being sensitive.

I didn’t wait to see whether the lyrics mentioned God.

I didn’t give it five more minutes.

I left.

And I’m actually really fucking proud of that.

Because there was a time in my life when I thought strength meant staying.

I thought strength meant enduring.

I thought healing meant eventually being able to stand in every room that ever hurt me and feel nothing.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Sometimes healing looks like recognizing the fire before you’re completely engulfed in it and walking the fuck out.

So I did.

Then I told someone I love what happened.

I said it triggered something awful in me.

I said I couldn’t go back.

And what came next hurt almost as much as the original thing.

Because instead of my no simply being accepted, there was an explanation.

The hymns aren’t really like traditional hymns.

The words don’t mention God.

They’re usually about respecting the earth and each other.

The format changes every week.

And I know that was probably all meant with love.

That’s what makes this so fucking complicated.

Because sometimes people hurt us while trying to love us.

Sometimes someone genuinely believes they’re helping you while they’re stepping directly on the boundary you just put down.

Sometimes pressure doesn’t sound cruel.

Sometimes pressure sounds helpful.

Sometimes it sounds like a solution.

Sometimes it sounds like accommodation.

And meanwhile every cell in your body is screaming:

I ALREADY SAID NO.

I wasn’t asking how I could go back.

I wasn’t asking how we could modify the experience enough for me to tolerate it.

I wasn’t asking for a schedule so I could decide which Sundays were safe.

I wasn’t asking to be convinced that what triggered me technically shouldn’t have triggered me.

I was saying:

I can’t go back.

That was the whole fucking sentence.

And God, or Goddess, or universe, or dirt under my fingernails, whatever the fuck you want to call it, why is it so difficult for us to let people have their no?

Especially the people we love.

Actually, no.

Let me rephrase that.

Why the fuck do we think love gives us permission to negotiate someone’s no?

Because it doesn’t.

Love doesn't make you entitled to access.

Love doesn't make you entitled to another explanation.

Love doesn't mean you get to decide whether somebody’s boundary makes sense.

Love doesn’t get to hold a fucking committee meeting about somebody else’s nervous system.

You can think my reaction is enormous.

You can think it doesn’t make sense.

You can know things about that church that I don’t.

You can love that church.

You can attend every Sunday for the rest of your life.

You can take every class they offer and sing every song in the damn book.

I genuinely hope it feeds something beautiful in you.

But you still don’t get to tell me that I should walk back through a door that my entire body just screamed at me to leave.

And here’s the part that makes me fucking furious.

I've worked so hard to learn how to trust myself.

Do you know how hard that is after years of teaching yourself that your own feelings are inconvenient?

After addiction?

After trauma?

After spending years overriding every internal alarm because somebody else’s comfort seemed more important than your own?

I spent years not listening to myself.

I numbed myself.

I abandoned myself.

I questioned myself.

I stayed when I wanted to leave.

I said yes when everything inside me was screaming no.

I explained and explained and explained until my boundaries became fucking dissertations that other people could grade and decide whether I'd made a convincing enough argument.

Recovery has been teaching me something completely different.

My no doesn't require a bibliography.

My boundary doesn't need peer review.

I don’t have to stand in front of a jury and present Exhibit A through fucking Z explaining why something hurts me badly enough to be allowed to leave.

I’m allowed to leave because I want to leave.

I’m allowed to say no because I mean no.

And I'm allowed to discover that something I thought would be safe for me isn’t.

That doesn’t mean the place is evil.

That doesn’t mean the people there are evil.

It doesn’t even mean anybody did anything wrong.

Maybe I misunderstood what Unitarian Universalism was.

Actually, I did.

I thought it was something different.

I should’ve researched it more before I went.

Now I understand it better.

It welcomes many faith traditions.

Cool.

Beautiful for the people who need that.

I don’t.

I’m not interested in a spiritual space where Christianity gets a seat at the table with everything else.

I don’t want Christianity to have a smaller seat.

I don’t want it sitting quietly in the corner.

I don’t want someone to tell me ahead of time which weeks it might stand up and sing.

I don’t want it in my spiritual space at all.

And that is allowed.

I can respect someone else’s right to practice something without volunteering to be anywhere near it.

Those aren't contradictory ideas.

You can have your sacred thing.

I can stay the fuck away from it.

Look at that.

Religious freedom.

Everybody wins.

What I can’t do is keep handing pieces of myself over because someone I love thinks I might be okay if we just rearrange the circumstances.

Because I know where that road goes.

It goes straight back to me learning not to trust myself.

And I have worked too fucking hard to come home to myself.

I'm sober today because I finally started listening when something inside me said, this is killing you.

I built a life because I started listening when something inside me said, there has to be something else.

I planted things.

I grew things.

I learned the names of birds and bugs and leaves.

I built rituals that actually mean something to me.

I found spirituality in soil and moonlight and tiny green things pushing their way out of dirt.

I found sacredness without needing somebody else to define it for me.

I learned that I don’t need to force myself into somebody else’s sanctuary.

I can grow my own.

So when that same voice inside me says,

Brittny, get out.

I fucking listen now.

That’s not weakness.

That’s not avoidance.

That’s not me failing some imaginary healing test.

That is a woman who spent years abandoning herself finally refusing to do it again.

And if you love me, I need you to understand something.

You don’t have to understand my no to respect it.

You don’t have to feel what I feel.

You don’t have to agree with my interpretation.

You don’t have to think you would react the same way.

You don’t even have to like my decision.

You just have to stop trying to turn it into a yes.

Because there are a thousand beautiful ways to love somebody.

Believe them.

Sit beside them.

Ask what they need.

Tell them you’re sorry something hurt.

Let them leave.

Let them change their mind.

Let them protect parts of themselves you’ll never completely understand.

Let them say no without making them afraid that their no might cost them your love.

That last one matters.

Because if I have to abandon myself to keep you, I don’t actually get to keep both of us.

And I’m not abandoning myself anymore.

I fucking refuse.

Maybe that’s what recovery has really been teaching me all along.

Not how to tolerate everything without reaching for a drink.

Not how to become so healed that nothing can touch me.

Not how to sit peacefully inside every uncomfortable feeling until I transcend into some serene little recovery Buddha who never gets angry.

Fuck that.

Maybe recovery is also learning when to get up and leave.

Maybe it’s learning that I’m allowed to protect the life I fought this hard to build.

Maybe it’s realizing that I don’t have to drink over something, destroy myself over something, or stay somewhere that hurts me just to prove I’m strong.

I can simply say:

No.

And then I can go water my plants.

I can sit with my dogs.

I can watch butterflies find my garden.

I can put my hands in the dirt and remember exactly who the fuck I am.

I can return to the sacred things that have never asked me to betray myself in order to belong.

And if you love me?

Come find me there.

But please, for the love of everything holy and unholy,

stop negotiating my fucking no.