Why I chose– and choose– recovery.

I would not have chosen trauma. Or addiction, for that matter. 

I would not have chosen it for you, and I would not have chosen it for me. 

Your mileage may vary, but I don’t believe “things happen for a reason.” 

(It’s perfectly okay if you do— I just don’t happen to believe that.) 

I don’t believe God, or anyone else, “gives” us challenges to “test” us. 

(Again, your mileage may vary— it’s perfect okay if you believe this; I jus don’t happen to.)

I think certain things happen to us just because we got enormously, extraordinarily unlucky. 

We were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, around the wrong people. We don’t ask for any of it, we don’t “choose” it, and most of the time we could not realistically opt out of it. 

I don’t believe we “chose” our parents, or what happened to us in this lifetime via “karma.” 

Here’s the thing, though: I understand why many people do believe all of those things. 

I completely understand the urge to try to give our trauma meaning. To try to convince ourselves that we somehow “caused” or “deserved” what happened to us. 

The alternative is truly awful: that terrible things can happen to innocent people, and we can’t control our vulnerability to certain kinds of trauma. 

Many people, including me, HATE that idea. We would rather feel guilty than helpless— so we bend over backwards trying to devise ways we somehow “caused” or “deserved” our trauma. 

I get it. But  don’t believe it. Not anymore, anyway. 

I don’t think God “tests” us with pain or challenges. And I definitely don’t believe we “have” to create or find meaning in our pain. 

We don’t “have” to do anything, necessarily, in response to our pain— including work a recovery. No one reading this “has” to work a recovery.  I would never suggest they do. 

All that said: I choose to work a recovery. 

And I choose to find— or, rather, create— meaning from my pain. 

This is not toxic positivity bullsh*t. This is what I choose to do with my pain, my trauma, my history. Your mileage may vary. 

I decided, at a certain point, that I was not going to waste my pain. 

The pain I endured may have been as random and meaningless as any pain that is inflicted on anyone, anywhere— but I decided that I am going to use it. 

How? By working my recovery. 

Working our recovery demands we get serious about things like values and goals and accountability in ways that people who aren’t working a recovery program will never, ever understand. 

Working a recovery means we wake up every day and choose recovery. It means no more going on autopilot. 

No more passively accepting what somebody else wants or expects from me. 

No more letting my mood, as opposed to my goals and values, determine my behavior. 

Recovery is how I decided to manufacture meaning from my pain. 

No one forced it on me. 

I could have kept on keeping on. Though at the rate I was going, I probably wouldn’t be alive to write these words if I’d done that. 

No one “has” to create meaning from their trauma by working a recovery. 

But it’s a choice we can make. 

No matter how exhausted we are, no matter how alone we feel, no matter how wounded we are. It’s not a matter of “character” or “intelligence” or any bullsh*t like that. 

Our trauma may not have had any rhyme or reason or meaning. 

But our recovery can.