Emotional pain is an excellent motivator. It can make a woman stick a needle of street drugs into her vein for the first time. Pain can make her overeat until she is 100 pounds over her ideal weight; it can make her marry, and stay married, to someone who hurts her every day. Satan, and yes, I refer to the great evil by that term, has little work to do in the life of a victim. Victims hurt themselves every single day until by the time they’re my age (59) they accept that they’re a failure. They hate God, themselves, and various other handy targets.

There are many options for self-torment: spending/buying, nonstop activity, drinking, drugs, social media, unemployment, debt, gambling, clutter, broken friends, and all manner of self-imposed chaos.

I don’t know a victim who doesn’t suffer from these things. My drug of choice was caffeine as it closely mimicked how I felt at night. (I do not use caffeine, now.) I was perpetually overweight. At 5-foot 1 inch, I swung between 150 and 200 pounds. Today I consistently weigh 116 or less.

It’s not about self-discipline. It’s about tolerance. How much of your own company can you stand? (This is also a very good approximation of hell but with the categorically different bonus that Jesus is here and choice is still yours.) How long can you sit still? In the beginning of recovery it won’t be long. The moment you are conscious, ie, sober, the truth will visit you. You’ll remember what happened, or, you’ll see, with vivid accuracy, how you’ve been a monster or a fool and you’ll almost automatically reach for your drug of choice.

Understand the choice you’re making. The truth isn’t going to change. You will still do stupid, embarrassing shit. You will still have the terrifying, rage producing memories. You’ll still be broke, fat, unemployed, lonely, in jail, or addicted. The ONLY way out is to emerge, for as long as you can stand it, into the presence of God, that is, into this moment right now.

During weight loss, I white-knuckled it. Not a day at a time, like AA says. For me it was this minute. OK. Now, minute #2. I’m not going to eat at 12:14pm. I’m going to sit here on this couch without my phone, without food, without anything. I’m going to sit here. I’m going to sit here. I glance at my thighs, they’re HUGE. I’m ugly and old. I’m going to sit here. I said something cancelling to my son. I’m a bitch. I hate myself. I’m going to sit here. I behaved like a victim in front of strangers in the supermarket. I’m a whore. I’m a raped child. I’m going to sit here. The demon in me begins to whine about how I’m hungry. No, no, I’m tired. No, I need to – OMG that would taste so good right now….. Then I pray, Jesus, for this moment, protect me from this evil. And so on.

Consciousness is reached by sitting still, which is hardest. It’s what I do most nights. I do not use any device or engage in any work or art activity after bedtime. If I can’t sleep, which normally I can’t, my option is to sit on the couch. For hours, all night, if necessary. This happens a lot. God is with me, though. I’m choosing this, I’m choosing me and God.

Consciousness can also be achieved by engaging in activities that take a long time. IE, cooking from scratch. I make all meals this way. Or walking. I walk 1.5 hours a day, or 5.3 miles, 5 days a week. I don’t use headphones whilst walking. Or you can be conscious through journalling. Every morning I write out, by hand, 3 pages about what I am thinking or feeling, 5 days a week. This is not timed. If I want to, I can sit there all day but I’m not going to get up until I’m done writing 3 pages. The more conscious I am, the sweeter God’s presence is, the more real, the more I know the truth about myself and about life.

The secret goal of every compulsive behavior is annihilation. Your intent, with everything you shove into your body, house, or life, is to erase you, to make it stop. It won’t stop; we both know that. Death is the beginning of infinite liberty or the beginning of eternal slavery. What death isn’t? It’s not a way out. In many of the nonfiction narratives I’ve studied I find evidence of wicked human beings committing suicide to escape the consequences of their behaviour. What they did, actually, was accelerate the consequence.

Prepare for heaven by learning now how to tolerate God’s company. You will find that God asks nothing of you more than to love you, to dignify you, to tolerate you when you do not tolerate yourself, to forgive you when you do not forgive yourself. God is not a judge of or a hater of or a punisher of or a critic of victimized women. We are God’s beloved, precious children of great value. We can stand the company of God if we can accept that what we do to others, and what was done to us is all stuff God already knows and that this awareness of our evil and the evil done to us does not hinder, jeopardize, or inhibit our God given position. Our predators chose to be eternal slaves with insatiably wicked masters. Consciousness is about choosing to be eternal daughters of a loving God with infinite freedom. The price is to be here, right now, as long and as often as you will. PS – it’s a lot fucking harder than it looks.