I go to that Angel City to face my demons and lay claim to the person I lost.

First time seeing the ocean and I know I’m home, caught up in the beauty, the water sliding back and forth on the sand. The water’s inhale as the tide pulls itself onto shore, and the exhale that pushes itself out again. The breath of the ocean, its constant rhythm, keeps me grounded and coming back, returning to that now sacred place between Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier. It soothes the ache, those raw tender places I came into the city with. It has been months now of just hanging on, just surviving, and this ocean could easily overcome me, but the salty water is balm to a soul land-locked and looking for a place to escape.

I spend my days in small, crowded rooms, the chairs and couches circled up as if this will somehow lessen the heaviness we carry. My story is not that different from hers or his who sit around me, picking at the skin around fingernails or biting lips, all looking down at the beige carpet like it will absorb the pain. It could make me mean to hear all this hurt. We are all walking weary and that clenched jaw and fist, can’t keep going on forever. Sometimes I just want to be done with all this acting and pretending. Yet everyone accepts the mask that I make, and I don’t try to remove it. So I sit clutching my cup of coffee, trying to conjure the confidence to talk. I have learned that when I listen, I give others permission to speak; and when I speak, I give others the courage to do the same.

The therapist goes around the room, checking in with each of us about how it’s going, this healing thing we are attempting. The woman next to me speaks about feeling such intense anxiety that she fears leaving the house, that even being here was an act of will. The words are caught, swelling, a mixture of tears and shame. Those weeping wounds can fester deep and hurt hot, but we are all here by choice, having come to the end of ourselves. Everyone is there for different reasons, but where stories and symptoms are different, the feelings are the same. We all feel alone, desperate for those around us to understand. People might talk about it more, judge less, the whole mental health thing, but understand? We have all felt the sting of that sideways glance, or the weaponized words of those who say they care about me. I am too sensitive, too sad, too much or not enough.

I am there for trauma treatment, finally succumbing to the post-traumatic stress and anxiety that has marked my life. I take a breath and begin; haltingly at first, gathering up grit and determination as I go. Soon, my story is pouring out of me, the basketball rising in my throat, making it hard to speak, the salty tears leaking from my eyes, like the ocean just a few miles away. I speak of how my dad split my legs and my mind splintered after. I tell of hating my body and all the things I did to hurt it. How self-starvation seemed like the next best thing after eating a five-course meal in shame. I know what it is to feel damaged, disgusting, and defective. I feel like I am standing there naked, my heart in hands outstretched and pleading; take this, I don’t want it anymore. When I am finished, I am exhausted and raw, but no one is looking at me with disgust. No one looks angry or calls me a whore, all things I expect.

Maybe it’s the transparency, finally being able to say the truth. There’s no reason to hide or be anything but who I am. I sit with these men and women, in rooms behind closed doors, all with a cacophony of voices, reeling circles in my head. I am not good enough; I need to do better; I am a failure; I wish you were never born.

These people are the bravest people I know, yet they would never believe it themselves. They tell of their complexities, the messy parts that no one else wants to hear about, all with their heads bowed in shame. I want to take their face, making sure their eyes find mine and tell them that this shame, it’s not theirs. We hold these stories for each other, cradled in our hands like the gifts that they are. Bearing witness to each other’s pain, the memories that caused it; being able to see each other amid all of it. It is like holding a child’s hand while walking across the street, getting them safely to the other side. These brave, beautiful people do not know how courageous it is to face this, a quiet surrender letting those self-protective layers peel back; to get out of bed every day and live. A man speaks of the alcohol addiction that has ruined his marriage, and I refuse to look away. I refuse to add to his already mounting shame.

I want to be beautiful but I know too much. My body has the corrosive remnants of fumbly fingers on my skin, and I feel imprisoned by its implication. I have stood in the shower trying to scrub it all away, desperate to get clean. Panic rising as the hot turns cold and I try to wipe away the nightmare. How can beauty find me when the ugly cling to me?

Our stories are important. They hold power, whether you share them twice or twenty times. They teach lessons on humanity’s collective fragility. They teach truths about humility and empathy. Humans can be so ugly to one another, but we can also draw strength from each other. We can see we are no longer alone to silently suffer. Things I can’t believe for myself, but I can believe for someone else forces me to see the fallacy in it all. Can I produce the same hope and understanding for myself that I so generously give to others?

I have heard it all before, their judgments in the form of advice. I just need to pray more. Stop living in the past. I have so much to be happy for. It can be dangerous, determining the box someone fits into based on a diagnosis. Sometimes I just want to be seen. Seen and accepted without adding or taking away. And then there is the appraisal that these mental health issues are somehow evidence of my weak character, that I am somehow more fragile. They have no idea what happens behind that two-inch door, inside that group room. We battle. We wrestle and wage war against those things that turn us inside out. The things that attempt to rob us of our faith and make us blind to the beauty around us. We will all find our feet on shaky legs and the voice that has been hushed.

On hard days I go to that spot, the one between Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier. Those hard days when I can’t connect the words to what I am feeling. Where I spend group looking out the window, the wind blowing the trees. Those days when everyone feels far away and I feel unreachable. The waves are like a slow dance, the songs in my ear pods merge with the liquid music of the sea, a reminder of my resolve to stay in this place of healing. The seagulls remind me of when I was a girl, crawling up a big round bale of hay, watching the birds dip and dive, soar and sing. I wanted to be a bird, flying free away from the cage I lived in. But I am not there, and the crashing cadence keeps me present. I will give grace to myself and keep fighting for what my heart and head have trouble believing.

I face the four-year-old, the ten-year-old, the fourteen-year-old and all the ways they helped me survive over and over again. Those parts provided protection from a world I did not choose. I saw pictures in the paint texture, walling off the hurt from what was happening. I stepped through life, eggshells under feet, focused on making it through another day. Where could I turn when my dad knew everyone? When my dad invited friends to play and I decided I was not fit to fight the battle? Easier to float to the ceiling and pretend those young girls were not me at all. The memories circle my mind like birds of prey, my body remembering things too heavy for my brain to hold. Sometimes they suffocate me, hold me down like the men that came into my bed. But I push back, hand to hand with my therapist. I push with her, because I couldn’t then. I speak now because I was silent before.

I think about my kids, how they are all so different. How my oldest daughter loves books and has an empathetic wisdom you can’t teach. We go on coffee dates and cry during movies together. My second born, a son, is so funny and can make the whole family laugh. I was terrified to have a son, but he stole my heart and those fears melted away like the snow that covered the earth when he was born. Next, a daughter. My little spitfire who is so brazenly bold, I know she is going to take the world in her hands and demand it’s attention. And finally, my baby, another son, who has a deep, left-sided dimple and smile, lighting up the hearts of those he sees. They take my breath away and teach me lessons and truths that I couldn’t learn without them. They grow my heart and force me to open my tightly held hand. This letting go…how I am constantly asked to open my hand and let go of things I was never meant to hold causes growing pains that hurt my breath away. Yet these kids, my husband; they bring a joy to life that I never thought possible.

I have my Goliaths; everyone does. Those things that tower tall and shrink me small. The convoluted chaos could make me go mad, a child trying to navigate this adult world; reading faces and in between words, trying to figure out what I thought I deserved based on what I did not receive. Hope keeps me bobbing on the surface of water, buoyed and safe from going under. Courage pulls me from the corners I cower in. Propelling me forward. I start swinging my sling-shot, taking down the monsters and memories that have left me stuck for so long. I feel stronger, able to see the path and how far I have come.

It’s not a perfect line though, ebbing and flowing like the mountains and rivers I crossed to get to this California spot. Some nights I go to sleep, teary and tired from the day’s therapeutic plunge into the darkness of my past, only to awaken with nightmares and sweat. I feel paralyzed, like I did back then. Flashbacks feel real, as I fight to stay grounded in the happenings around me. Frustrated, I wonder how long and far this reaches before it is forever removed from my brain. I wonder if I am just weak, a wounded bird, and someone else would heal better and faster.

I look at my wrist, tracing the tattoo. It is of a wave, flowing into the word hope. I got it to remind me of the hope that keeps me moving through the days, withstanding even the biggest wave. I know I am not defined by the things that happened, any more than the diagnosis I come in or leave with. Sometimes the head and heart are slow to recognize and believe such simple truths in the face of such complexity. We are all more than a series of boxes, appeasing the professional’s heels that click away from us. We aren’t our secrets or shame or a set of bullet points under our name. Perhaps we will all leave diagnosed as relentlessly resilient, brilliantly brave, and courageously tenacious. Maybe when we look back on our time at this healing place, we will know we are warriors, willing to write our own narrative and learning to experience abundant joy wherever we are.

Emily Reicherts is a wife and mom living in Northern Iowa, raising four kids and two cavapoos with my husband of fifteen years. I will graduate with my MFA from Lindenwood University in May of 2022. I hope to teach and empower others to write their own narratives and truths. I have past publications is Eucalyptus and Rose Literary Magazine and Awakenings Literary magazine.