Main Survivor/Protagonist (2:37)
So I'm gonna start where it started for me. Which was a scream and a foolish hope. I found the retreat because I was looking for help. And the way desperate people look for help. I was sitting up too late, sleeping badly, hating myself in long, familiar ways. And the site they built knew exactly how to appeal to somebody like me. It looked expensive, calm and legitimate. And everything on it was designed to make you feel seen without ever feeling exposed. There were videos, smiling faces and language about trauma and release. It all had that polished, therapeutic tone that makes suffering sound manageable. If you just put trust in the right hands. The application was long enough to feel serious. They asked about anxiety, depression, addiction, family history, abuse, grief, guilt, regret, sleep, self harm, medication, dissociation, panic, and every other private ruin a person usually learns to drag around in silence. At the time, I thought they were being thorough, and some part of me even found that comforting and felt like if they needed that much detail, then maybe they actually knew what they were doing. A few days later, I got an email congratulating me, saying I'd been accepted into a fully covered, healing, intensive stay, travel, lodging, meals, everything. I read the whole thing three times, and I remember sitting there with my laptop open and feeling something I hadn't felt in a long time. The possibility that maybe my life was about to change for the better. They flew me to a small airport out west. There was a shuttle waiting for us outside, a driver who already had all our names, and there were other people getting on with the same stiff, careful energy. Nobody talked much. We all had that same anxious look. The paperwork happened at an office near the airport. We signed waivers, acknowledgments, medical disclosures, consent forms, all of it in neat stacks on clipboards, while staff moved us along with smiles and bottled water. After that, they took our phones and personal belongings, and while they did it, somebody recorded each of us stating we were there voluntarily and understood we could still choose to leave. Nobody did. We'd traveled, signed, disclosed, surrendered our things and bought into the idea that this was the doorway to getting better. Walking away at that point would have felt like quitting in front of an audience. They put us on another shuttle after that and drove us to a private strip of land that barely had a paved road. The plane was small and the flight wasn't long, but it was long enough for the world we came from to feel gone by the time we landed. The place they took us sat out past everything cut off by water and rock and distance. The retreat itself was beautiful. The main lodge was all warm wood, stone, soft amber light, clean windows, nice furniture and expensive rugs. Smaller cabins sat farther out from the lodge, where the ground sloped toward the trees and the cliffs. The staff were waiting for us by the main lodge. They knew our names, shook our hands, looked us in the eye, and spoke with the kind of calm confidence that makes you assume they've done this a hundred times before. They welcomed us, thanked us for being there, told us the hardest part was over, and said all we had to do now was be honest and stay open to the process. There were 16 of us in the group. We had dinner together that night, at one long table in the main lodge, while music played quietly. The food was better than anything I'd eaten in months, and everyone at the table looked nervous, guarded, exhausted, and hopeful enough to be embarrassed by it. We went around and did introductions, and the staff kept it light. Maim where you came from, and one sentence about what brought you there. Nothing too deep, nothing that would send the whole table into tears on night one, just enough to make everybody feel seen. That first night, lying in bed in a room that smelled like clean linen and cedar, I remember thinking I might have finally done one thing right. That feeling lasted until morning. Breakfast was quiet. Plates and coffee appeared before we had time to ask for anything, and by the time we finished, there were already staff members forming groups to start our first exercise. One of the guides took my group out onto the deck behind the lodge. The morning air still had a bite to it, and she talked to us about grounding, about letting the body feel safe before the mind could do any real work, and her voice was low and warm and patient, and the whole thing was so normal, so close to what you'd expect from a place advertising deep healing that whatever guard I had up started to come down without me really noticing it. We breathed, we named things we could see, we named things we could hear, we named things we were carrying. Anger, shame, grief, panic, guilt, fear. They liked that word, carrying. I used it all the time, like pain was a weight and they had some place to dump it. After that, they split us up. They never made a big deal out of it. You'd be in a room with everybody, then one of them would appear in the doorway, smile at somebody, say the name, and that person would go with them. 20 minutes later somebody else would get taken, then somebody else. Then you'd all end up together again at lunch, and nobody would know what to say because nobody wanted to ask a stranger what they'd confessed in private. My first one on one session was in a room with a couch, two chairs, and a big window looking out at the water. The guide I got was a man in his 40s with a clean beard and the kind of face he want to trust. He asked me questions the way good therapists ask questions, not rushing to fill the silence, not pretending he already understood me. He asked what I blamed myself for, not what happened to me, not what I'd survived, what I'd blamed myself for. By lunch I had a headache. Around the table, a couple of people were already looser than they'd been the night before. One girl who'd barely made eye contact at dinner, was laughing. A guy across from me looked like he'd slept 12 hours and gotten laid. They both kept saying some version of the same thing, that the private sessions had cracked something open in a good way, that for the first time in years they felt like themselves. I wanted that so badly it made me angry. Later, we sat in a circle in a room off the main lodge, and one of the women guiding us said healing couldn't happen while we were still protecting the stories we told ourselves. Then she handed out index cards and told us to write down the thing we never said out loud. Nobody looked up. For a long while you could hear pens moving and people trying not to cry. While the cards were collected, she shuffled them and read them back one at a time, and we were told to raise our hands if the card belonged to us. It started off with things like, I ruin every relationship I'm in. I could have done more. I knew what was happening, and I stayed. I wanted to hurt her the way I hurt. The guides made us answer questions after each one. Who taught you that? What do you get from keeping it? How long are you going to worship that pain? Sometimes they'd turn it to the group and ask what they heard in it. Sometimes the group would say something kind. Sometimes they wouldn't. Either way, by the time the session ended, everybody looked peeled open. You could feel it at dinner that night. A few of the people who seemed lighter earlier still had that relaxed, easy look, maybe even more than before. One of the yides touched a shoulder on her way past, and a woman near me closed her eyes and smiled like she'd just been blessed. Another guy kept grinning at nothing, slow and dreamy, his fork moving through his food without much purpose. They were getting somewhere and I wasn't. Some people moved through the days like this place was doing God's work. The rest of us got worse. Nobody ever used force. Nobody dragged me anywhere. Nobody screamed or threatened me with anything I could point to. I just kept turning everything into a choice that felt like it was already made for me. By the second day, the sessions started bleeding into each other. In the morning, we had to describe the worst thing we'd ever done. Another in the afternoon, we were told to repeat back what we'd heard from the group and identify the resistance in our reactions. If you got angry, you were resisting. If you shut down, you were resisting. If you cried, if you laughed, if you asked for a break, if you went too quiet, if you said you didn't understand what the point of something was all of it was folded back on you. That's your resistance. And because some part of me had come there expecting pain, expecting to earn something, I kept accepting it. They took us to the black sphere after dark in a single fire line, guides in front and behind, the path lit with low ground lamps. Nobody spoke much in the walkover. Then the path opened and suddenly there it was. The pit was shallow, maybe waist deep at the center, wide enough that all of us could stand around it without crowding the thing inside. It sat half buried in the earth. Black isn't really the right word for it. The thing had depth in a way that made my stomach drop the second I locked onto didn't catch light or reflect anything back. It had the feeling of vast distance, even though it was right there in front of me. One of the guides called it a vessel. They spoke about it with a reverence I didn't know what to do with. It will take away what you no longer want to carry, one of them said. Nobody laughed. Nobody rolled their eyes. By then they had all of us softened up enough that even the people who were skeptical were too wrung out to show it. We were told to look. That was all. Just look and breathed and let whatever came up come up. The second I really let my eyes settle on it. The ground under me seemed to tilt. My body didn't move, but something in my stomach dropped so hard and fast I almost put a hand out to steady myself. I remember hearing someone start crying. I remember a man to my left making a sound like he was going to vomit and then swallowing it down. I remember wanting to look away and not being able to, because every time I tried, something in me tugged back toward that pit. It felt like falling inward. That's the closest I can get to it. Like the sensation of depth opening somewhere behind my eyes and under my sternum at the same time, as if all the space inside me had suddenly turned vertical and wanted to empty out. My whole body went cold and hot in waves. I started crying before I realized the sobs were mine. Not quiet, stoic tears either. A full blown breakdown. My jaw was shaking. My hands were numb. I could feel every bad thing I'd ever tried to keep packed down starting to come loose at once. Around me, people were reacting in all kinds of ways. One woman from the happy group had this soft smile on her face like she was watching fireflies. A guy near the front had gone completely still. Another woman dropped to her knees and wrapped both arms around herself like she was freezing to death. One of the guides moved through us, slowly touching shoulders, whispering things too low for me to make out. I don't know how long they kept us there. Time around the pit turned useless. At some point a hand closed gently around my upper arm and guided me back from the edge. My legs hardly worked. I looked up at the guide holding me. She gave me this small approving nod. It's working deeply within you, she said. That's why it hurts. I fucking believed her. I believed her enough to be grateful. After the pit, everything changed. And if I'm being honest with you, I don't know how much of that change was in the place and how much of it was in us. Nobody explained it. All they had to say was that some people moved through the work faster than others, and if you were one of the ones who felt sick and raw and terrified, that only meant your burden was deeper. The worse I felt, the more they treated me like I was on the edge of something important. The sessions after that started feeling like somebody had found a way to make my worst instincts about myself become my all consuming reality. They woke us early. They kept us moving. If we weren't in a group circle, we were in a one on one. If we weren't in a one on one, we were journaling, confessing, repeating, processing, sharing, breathing, confronting, revisiting. There was always a word for what they were doing that made it sound measured and temporary, and they had a way of turning your own language against you. V said you felt overwhelmed. They called it avoidance. He said you needed time. They called it a delay. He said you didn't understand why something had to happen a certain way. They'd ask if you were committed to getting better or if you were more committed to protecting Allah. You told yourself to bury the pain. And because they already knew where all our weak points were, because we had given them willingly in the application and then reinforced them in the group circles and private sessions, they knew exactly how to push us. One afternoon they paired us off and told us we were going to speak our truths to each other without interruption. The person I got matched with was a woman named Elise, maybe 30, who told us on the first night that she hadn't spoken to her sister in four years and never gave the reason. She looked grey with exhaustion by then, like the place had worn her thin. We sat knee to me in a small room while one of the guides watched from the corner and took notes. Annalise told me things about what had been done to her, what she'd done after, how certain moments in her life had split her in half and left the pieces rubbing against each other ever since. Then it was my turn, and I said things I never said out loud to anyone. Not because I trusted her, not because I wanted to, but because by then I felt tired and beaten, and I didn't think I had an option not to. That night in the group circle, one of the facilitators repeated something Elise had said, almost word for word. She didn't name her, but everyone knew. Elise folded in on herself like she'd been hit in the chest. The guide just kept going, talking about the lies we tell ourselves about privacy, about how healing required us to stop curating our own pain and let it stand in the open where it could be transformed. The food changed, too. The happy ones ate more than we did, or maybe they were given different things in those private sessions. Whatever it was left them glowing and loose jointed while the rest of us moved around with headaches and shaking hands. By the last full day, the gap between us had turned ugly. The healed group looked almost childlike. They smiled when spoken to, they clapped when the guides said anything. It would have been easier if we all looked miserable, if the whole place had gone openly bad at once. But some of them looked so happy, and if you were one of the ones still suffering, you kept thinking maybe the fault was still inside you. Then the last evening started as a celebration. They had us dress in the white clothes they'd given us on arrival, simple, loose cotton things. They brought us to the pit and organized everyone around it. The guides were warm again, almost tender, and they kept telling us how proud they were of us, how far we'd come, how close we were. Now everybody kept looking toward where the oldest of the facilitators stood with her hands folded in front of her. When she finally spoke, everyone went silent. She told us we had done extraordinary work. She told us that real healing required courage, and that courage always reached a point where it had to become surrender. She said pain did not leave the body willingly, that it had weight, that if it was going to be taken from us, it must be surrendered. I can still feel a part of me that wanted to understand her in the best possible way. I wanted her to mean symbolism. I wanted her to mean one more exercise, one more confession, one more ugly cry in a room with low lighting and peppermint tea. Instead, they brought one of the smiling ones forward. Her name was Jessa. She had been bright and overly sweet, hugging people without warning, laughing hard at nothing, eyes wet and unfocused. When they led her to the front. She looked at all of us like we were about to throw her a surprise party. The old woman asked her if she was ready to be free, and Jessa nodded eagerly. Then the facilitators turned to us, explaining in those same patient voices that release required witness, that burden required transfer, that healing was not passive, that love demanded action. They put a knife on a nearby folding table. I need you to understand how ordinary it looked. It wasn't ceremonial or antique. It was just sharp and clean and real. Who's ready to step into their new life? One of them said. A man named Colin took the first step forward. He was trembling so badly his teeth audibly clacked. He kept saying, I'm ready. I'm ready, I'm ready, like he was trying to convince himself. They embraced him, praised him, told him they were proud of him. Then they turned Jassa toward him. She was smiling widely. I don't know if she understood anything that was happening. I don't know what they'd given her. She looked at Colin with this sloppy warmth on her face when he took the knife. He hesitated long enough for one of the facilitators to step close and place a hand on his back. You are carrying all of us now, she said. When he did it, he made a sound I've never heard from another person before. Jessa folded almost immediately, still smiling in a way that did something permanent to me. Some people screamed, some dropped to their knees, some surged forward. It just evolved into chaos, too muddy and too quick to understand. Hands pushing, hands holding, hands finishing it. Shared responsibility, shared ruin. A whole group of people so broken and so manipulated that they would have done anything. I don't know exactly what I did. I know I was there. I know there was blood on me. It wasn't mine. I know somebody shoved me forward and somebody else was sobbing into my shoulder. And one of the guides kept saying, yes, yes, let it leave, let it leave, let it leave. By the time it was over, everything had gone still and quiet. Colwyn was on the ground, dry heaving. Jessa was not moving. The smiling ones kept smiling. Some of them clapped softly, like children at a recital, and the guides looked pleased in a cold, content way. It was the look of people watching an event unfold perfectly. The sphere looked different. It just looked deeper, more awake somehow. I started to feel the same falling sensation as before, but now there was pressure with it, a thick heaviness in the sinuses and the chest. People started bleeding almost right away. A nose first, then another, then someone coughing into their hand and staring at the red in disbelief before folding at the waist. The old woman raised her arms and began speaking in the same soft voice. Only now there was no therapeutic language left. In was pure reverence. The other guides melt. Some of the participants dropped with them because there was nothing else to do. The ground around the pit had turned slick by then. Dirt and blood makes a smell together that never really leaves you. The sphere seemed to be pulling the light toward itself. My ears were ringing. Somebody behind me screamed one long sustained note and didn't stop until wet meaty sounds made it stop. Then it started to come through. The darkness above the sphere thickened first, like the negative film version of a heat shimmer. The shape came into it not all at once, but enough that the human eye did what it always does and tried to understand it in pieces, height, mass, limbs where there shouldn't have been limbs. Something vast forcing itself into a space too small for it, dragging wetness and light and pressure with it. The staff started crying out, chanting and celebrating. A man beside me trucked to his hands at knees, and his body made a sound like breaking wood. One of the guides pulled him up by the elbow and his whole arm came away at the shoulder in a hot spray across my face. Somebody was pulled backward toward the pit, leaving furrows in the mud. The screaming turned into something bigger than screaming. After that, the whole scene broke open into slaughter. I saw something like an arm, but longer, wrong at the joints, slick and dark, move through two bodies so fast. I didn't understand what had happened until both people were in pieces on the ground. I saw one of the smiling women kneeling with her hands together like she was praying while her entire face split down the middle and opened. I saw the black of the sphere under everything, steady and bottomless, while this thing dragged more of itself into the night above it. Then something hit me. Maybe it was a body thrown sideways. Maybe it was part of the thing. Maybe it was just another participant trying to get away. All I know is something hard caught me across the side of the head and sent me down into the mud. I remember dirt in my mouth, blood in my eyes, people slipping and falling and disappearing, and above all of it, that impossible shape rising higher. And there was the last thing I saw clearly before everything went black.
