A Year In Review

Exactly one year ago, I decided to walk away from everything I had known.  Even after all the crazy experiences I’ve had, this was the scariest thing I’ve done because life after The Game has no rules.  For every major event I’ve experienced in my life, there was some step that I knew I needed to do in order to get my life back on track – when I was arrested I hired a lawyer, when I was in a car accident I filed a report with my insurance company, when I was had e-coli I went to the hospital.  There was always someone there with more knowledge and experience that was used to dealing with whatever situation I was going through, someone that knew what to do next.  They could guide me through the process.  The Game itself has its own set of rules that I followed diligently because it promised me that if I followed the rules, everything would work out in my favor.  So when I left The Game, there was no one there to show me the way.  There were no longer rules to let me know where the expectations were for me.  There was no retainer fee to put down, no form to fill out, and no office I could walk into and receive treatment.  There was nothing.

The Game was not just a career choice for me; it took over my every move, my every thought.  I looked at situations and interactions with people completely different than I had before.  My daily routines were affected by it, the people I welcomed into my home changed because of it.  My priorities were different as a result of it.  The Game is a lifestyle and I was committed to it, for better or for worse.  And this is why people who have never lived it do not understand why I couldn’t just simply put in my two weeks, pack up my desk, and start working somewhere else.  Getting out of The Game is not just a career change that I could make overnight – I couldn’t just up and walk away from the only lifestyle I had known for a very long time.  With the hustle permeating every area of my life and thoughts, it wasn’t something I could just switch up.  Through all the situations I’ve survived and places I’ve visited and people I’ve met, The Game had been the one consistent thing in my life.  So to suddenly remove this was like ripping the skeleton from the body of my life – I had no structure, no general idea of how things should look anymore.

When I first left, I spent about six full months detoxing from life.  I became increasingly aware of all the toxic substances I had let into my life – not only physically, but emotionally and mentally as well.  Looking back on this time, I am so thankful I was able to afford this period in which I could “do nothing” because I think I would have struggled a lot more to walk away completely.  Being thrust from the rules of The Game into normal society would have shocked me so deeply I would have run immediately back to what was most familiar.  This transition period was crucial in breaking my physical and mental habits and moving towards focusing on a more positive future.

The second half of this last year, I started meeting positive people and building a support system, developing healthy habits and training my thoughts to go in a new direction, .  Despite how resilient I know I am because of all the things I’ve been through previous to leaving The Game, every interaction was like a complete shock to my system.  I couldn’t process information without reading it through my Game lenses first, I interpreted interactions incorrectly constantly, and I started experiencing flashbacks.  Every day I felt overwhelmed and over-stimulated by seemingly simple tasks and activities – it was a constant battle just to make it through the day without losing my grip on reality.  This was so frustrating to me because I know how strong I can be, I know how independent I am, and I know I can survive just about anything.  So accepting that there was something out of my control, something that I couldn’t "just get over” was a difficult step.  But it is always darkest before the dawn.

Being treated for symptoms stemming from long-term PTSD has been a very emotional and exhausting process, and I am nowhere near “healed.”  But it has helped me to grow and heal immensely already in a relatively short amount of time.  I do not spend hours of my every day reliving graphic memories.  I am here, in the present, to enjoy my friends and family.  My emotions do not swing from one extreme to the other as often, and I know how to deal with situations that trigger negative emotions or bad memories.  For the first time since I can remember, I have gotten a full night’s sleep and woken up feeling rested.  And I am starting to be able to see that I do in fact have a future, and that it’s going to be great because I hold the power to make it that way.

I have slowly started to fill in the framework that disappeared when I left The Game a year ago.  It has not been easy – it is very frustrating to have to re-teach yourself coping skills that were at one point just natural instinct but were overridden with chaos and then forgotten.  There are days that I am so tempted to just give up and go back – I already know what to expect from The Game, it seems like it would be so much easier to stick with what is familiar.  I am challenged to retrain my way of thinking and processing information.  I have to take a close look at the list of lies I know The Game had blinded me with, and I have to compare these to the truths that I am living every day now.  And that is why, after a year away from The Game, I still know that I made the right decision for me.  I remind myself that life is a process, not an event, and I am truly in the process of becoming great.