Ouch – That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

I was watching Katie Couric interview Andre Agassi on 60 Minutes on Sunday and I was struck by this idea of scars and how there are many things that happen to us in our lives and things that are said to us that leave a mark. Many times you don’t realize the mark that’s being left in the moment but only years later when something is not going as planned or you are having a little crisis of meaning and you look for an explanation do you recall the scar that was left behind.

From the sound of the interview Andre experienced many things and heard many words that left some serious marks on his soul – so serious that when everything fell apart in front of the world, (it was falling apart behind the scenes for a long time) he turned to drugs to heal his scars.

Naturally, he found that crystal meth lacked any healing properties, and I’m sure he knew that on an intellectual level before he took it for the first time; but, like many people do, when you are in the dark night of the soul, you rarely do things that make much sense. I get that. In fact, as the story progressed I realized that nothing about his story really shocked me. I understand from a psychological stand point why he got to that place and why he took the route he did. I also get why he lied about it. There are a million horrible stories that people are living with and many deal with them in very unproductive ways like lying about them or abusing alcohol, drugs, food, people, money, etc.

I would have been interested in hearing what he had tried to get out of his funk before he turned to meth. But that probably would not have been an interesting enough discussion to garner prime time ratings.

Anyway, later than night I was flipping channels and ran across a movie where the character was recounting a time when she was playing on the ice with her sister when they were young kids and her sister fell in. Her father came and pulled her out and fortunately her sister was fine but she said, “It was the longest 7 minutes of my life. I guess I’ve never really gotten over it.” The guy she was talking to said, “It defines you in a way doesn’t it?” and they both nodded their heads in agreement.

It was  a movie so the drama was necessary to the story I guess but I was reminded again about how important and how big our OWN personal stories are to us. In a “what about me” moment as I was listening to this dialogue I thought “Seriously – you never got over your sister being okay? Her moment in the water defines you?  What about my sister? She actually died and it wasn’t 7 minutes of wondering if she would make it, it was 2 and half years and she didn’t.”

That little exchange reminded me that sometimes there is far more power in the emotion we experience than in the aftermath of the act itself. Meaning those 7 minutes for her, or anyone else with a similar experience were so intense, so powerful and so terrifying that even though her sister was fine, the emotion that was felt may leave a permanent mark. Often I can more readily recount the moments of fear I had about my sister dying than I can about the experience of her death.

So as I thought about the story of her sister in the water I thought of a similar near miss I had in my life. One night while I was in college I woke up to a strange man pinning me down and telling me to “shut up, shut up and don’t move.” Even if you have never experienced that before you can imagine that being paralyzed by fear is about all you can be at that point. I was sexually assaulted and bruised though not fully raped thanks to what I believe was a combination of some extremely powerful adrenaline on my part, a serious commitment to bite, kick and scream and a less than sober and experienced attacker.

And even though I learned at the trial, where he was convicted of sexual assault, burglary and carrying a weapon and was sent to prison, that he had no intention of killing me, I didn’t know that at the time he was pinning me down. In my mind I was about to die and when you wake up in the middle of the night to a strange man assaulting you in your own bedroom that’s a natural leap to take. So, did I make it out alive? Yes. Did I escape the assault with far less trauma than I could have? Absolutely. But it still left a mark.

Fortunately for me that mark was one of the best marks I’ve ever been given. You see, right after that happened I was scared all the time. I was scared to be alone, scared to be outside, scared to be inside, scared to go to sleep and I remember thinking if I am not safe in my own bedroom, I’m not safe anywhere or with anyone. I can still see myself sitting on my bed crying about the life I was imagining. It was bleak. Then, all of the sudden one day there was a voice inside me that said “you don’t have to live that story you know – you can change it right now.” I realized at that moment that I had a choice – I could either live in fear that something else bad was going to happen, which didn’t sound like any fun at all, or I could assume I was perfectly safe and get on with my BIG life – that was a much better story.

That seemingly small decision opened a door I never predicted. Looking at the mark he had left in that way allowed me to identify exactly what I was going to do with my life. After having spent so many years feeling lost and without direction after my sister died, it was this event, that brought my future into specific relief. I reclaimed my life and my purpose in it. I finally had a direction and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Finally, instead of trying to live out mine AND my sister’s purpose, I had just my own to fulfill.

So, the truth is we all have marks – some deeper and more obvious than others and it’s not our job or even within our ability to change the experience or the emotions we felt when the mark was being left but we can change what we allow that mark to mean and how we choose to deal with it. The mark may never go away and that’s fine. Just like all of the scars I have on my knees from my surgeries and the ones left over from falling off my bike or off my roller skates as a kid, I look at them and think, “Damn you were tough. You’re still here and you’re still riding your bike. Life is good!”

Tagged as: Andre Agassi, psychology, stories