It’s funny how we don’t realize what shaped us until much later—until we’re sitting in the middle of trying to unlearn it.
For me, that realization came in recovery. In the quiet moments when the noise of gambling was gone, and all that was left was… me. Me, and everything I’d spent years trying to outrun.
When I look through the window of my childhood now, I can see so clearly how the patterns were laid long before gambling ever showed up. They were subtle, unspoken lessons about what it meant to survive.
I grew up in a house that carried more chaos than calm. And not the cozy kind of chaos, the kind that feels loud and full of life. No, this was different. It was the kind of chaos that made you come up with excuses for why friends couldn’t come over. Back then, I thought it was just the way things were. But looking back now, I can see it was a reflection of what was happening inside the people in it. My mom was doing the best she could, holding it together for me and my sisters, but underneath, she was fighting battles no one talked about. Depression. Exhaustion. Survival.
And in that space, where structure was loose and boundaries were nearly invisible, I learned how to float. How to disappear into the background. How to not ask for too much. I learned, without anyone ever saying it out loud, that needing less made me easier to love.
It’s wild how those lessons follow you. How what we label as “normal” in childhood becomes the lens we carry into adulthood, until we realize that lens is cracked.
For me, gambling eventually became the place I went to disappear. A place where the noise of my own mind quieted for just a little while. A place where no one needed anything from me. A place that offered the illusion of control in a life where I so often felt powerless. A way to soothe all the things I didn’t know how to face.
For me, recovery has been a process of unlearning. Unlearning the belief that I had to carry everything on my own. Unlearning that disappearing was safer than being seen. Unlearning that my worth was tied to how little space I took up.
It’s uncomfortable work, this business of unlearning. But it’s also where healing happens. Because the truth is, those old patterns? They weren’t mine to keep. They were survival skills for a chapter of life that’s long over.
And now? Now I get to choose something different.
I get to choose boundaries. I get to choose presence. I get to choose myself. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But one day, one moment, one unlearning at a time.
If you’re sitting in that messy middle of trying to untangle old patterns, you’re not alone. It’s hard. But it’s also the most honest, beautiful kind of work there is. It’s building a life I don’t want to escape from.
We don’t get to choose what shaped us. But we do get to choose what we carry forward. And today, I choose recovery. I choose healing. I choose me.
Your sister in recovery,
Christina
Copyright: Christina Cook, The Broke Girl Society / BGS Media, LLC