Regaining Myself

I know that there are many reasons to not come clean about one's addiction. Ever since I was a teenager, I would regularly feel the twinge of my conscience telling me that I needed to make a confession, but I never listened to it. It was just too terrifying, had too many ramifications, and would brand me with too many labels. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I kept the double-life going all the way through dating and the first five years of my marriage. As the years went by, I developed more nuanced justifications for concealing the truth. I knew that my wife looked up to me, and I told myself that it would be irresponsible to hurt her by letting her know of my betrayal. I considered the callings that I had in my church, and told myself that making a confession would mean losing those opportunities to serve others. And what if there were legal ramifications to my sins that compromised my ability to be a father to my son? “So you see,” I said to myself, “silently bearing the burden of what you’ve done and letting everyone else remain in blissful ignorance is the noble thing to do.”

What absolute, manipulative, self-serving, BS!

This wasn’t about other people, it was about me. I didn’t want to jeopardize my marriage. I didn’t want to lose my social status. I didn’t want to pay the price for my wrongs. I might have dressed my selfishness as concern for others, but it was selfishness all the same.

Thankfully, one day I managed to break out of that state of denial and justification. Exactly how is a story for another time, but the end result was that I finally told my wife, my church leaders, a therapist, and my family what was really going on. And when I did, I found something that I hadn’t even realized I was missing.

Myself.

You cannot live a lie without losing yourself. That’s just the way it works. And in all my years of telling lies I had lost my soul so gradually and imperceptibly that I didn’t even realize it had happened. Because I was always wearing a mask, life happened to the mask and not to me.

But then, from the very first moment that I made my confession, the mask came off and light and air rushed back onto my real face and I definitely felt that! It felt like my soul was being restored. Yes, now there was a great deal more stress and drama in my life, but it was all happening directly to me, not to the mask, and that was all that mattered.

In all my years of fear, I had been keenly aware of all the bad things that might happen to me if I told the truth, but I had never accounted for the good. If I were to travel back in time to talk with my past self when I was still unsure about coming clean I would say, “you’re right, you might lose your family, your status, your church, but none of those will be as bitter as you think because you’ll also get your authentic self back, and that is sweet enough to make up for all the rest.”

Jesus asked, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26). He is suggesting that no reward is worth the loss of a soul. I know now that this is true, because I’ve experienced the happy opposite of it.

What does a man really lack, even if he loses the whole world, but regains his own soul?

By Abe, Writing Team