Living in Holey Comfort
There was a time when I called it comfort.
The glass of wine that blurred my edges.
The pill that promised peace.
The late-night texts to men whose names I barely remembered in the morning.
Comfort — that’s what I told myself it was.
But what I was really chasing was disappearance.
Addiction became my religion of forgetting.
Each sip, each swallow, each surrender was an offering to the gods of numbness. I didn’t know it then, but I was worshipping a false god — a god that asked for everything and gave me nothing but more emptiness.
It was an unholey comfort — the kind that fills the sacred cracks in your soul with poison and calls it peace.
You see, the “holes” I talk about in Holey House aren’t flaws. They are the openings left behind by pain — the sacred entry points for light, love, and breath to flow through us.
But I didn’t know that yet.
Back then, I tried to patch those holes with anything I could find: substances, sex, perfection, control.
What I didn’t realize was that every time I filled the hole, I blocked the healing.
When Survival Becomes a Ritual of Numbing
Addiction, for me, wasn’t about getting high. It was about getting away — from myself.
From the noise. From the memories. From the unbearable truth of what had been done to me.
When you’re an incest survivor, pain doesn’t just visit — it moves in, rearranges the furniture, and calls itself home. Your nervous system learns to live in defense. Every cell carries a story of threat.
And so, you adapt. You find ways to function.
You perform. You achieve. You help others. You smile when you want to scream.
But under the mask, the child inside is still trembling — still waiting for someone to notice her, still terrified that someone will.
So, you find something to take the edge off.
Something that promises relief.
Something that feels like a friend — even when it’s killing you slowly.
Dr. Gabor Maté, whose work on addiction has saved countless lives, once said,
“Addiction is not a choice that anyone makes; it’s a response to emotional pain, to human suffering.”
And that hit me like a truth bomb. Because that was me — a child of pain, dressed as an adult of purpose, medicating memories that refused to die.
The Body That Wouldn’t Forget
Trauma lives in the body.
That’s not metaphor — it’s biology.
Bessel van der Kolk wrote, “The body keeps the score.”
My body kept mine in the way my hands shook when I was still, in the nightmares that made me wake gasping for air, in the cravings that came not from want but from terror.
When I drank, it wasn’t rebellion — it was regulation.
When I used, it wasn’t defiance — it was dissociation.
Because sobriety felt like standing too close to a flame I couldn’t put out.
Every sound, every smell, every silence became an echo of danger.
Substances didn’t make me feel good — they made me feel nothing.
And when your memories burn like acid, nothing feels like mercy.
But that’s the illusion — the “unholey” part.
What feels like protection is actually imprisonment.
The more I numbed, the deeper the hole became.
Addiction as a Relational Disorder
I used to think addiction was about substances. It’s not.
It’s about separation.
When your first lessons in love are intertwined with betrayal, your brain wires itself to equate intimacy with annihilation.
You stop reaching for people and start reaching for relief.
Dr. Bruce Perry explains this perfectly:
“The most powerful therapy is human love. The most powerful medicine is human connection.”
But what happens when love itself was the site of the wound?
When the hands that were supposed to hold you safe were the same ones that hurt you?
Addiction becomes a tragic love affair — a loyal relationship with your pain. It never abandons you. It never judges you. It always takes you back.
That’s why recovery can feel like betrayal.
Because in a strange, painful way, substances were the only thing that never left me.
I thought they filled the hole.
But really, they were keeping me from discovering what that hole was for — to receive love that didn’t hurt.
The Neuroscience of Escape
For years, I believed I was weak. That I lacked discipline.
But trauma doesn’t make you weak — it rewires your brain for survival.
In chronic trauma, the limbic system — the emotional control center — becomes hyperactive. The amygdala fires constantly, warning of danger. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for logic and reasoning, goes offline.
So, when that panic rises, the brain searches for relief.
Alcohol floods it with dopamine and GABA — the chemicals of calm and reward. Opiates mimic endorphins, soothing pain. Stimulants jolt the fogged nervous system back into false aliveness.
For a survivor’s brain, substances feel like safety — until they become another form of captivity.
Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, teaches that trauma isn’t the event itself, but the body’s inability to complete the defensive response.
Addiction hijacks that completion. It replaces organic healing with artificial sedation.
Each time I used, I wasn’t healing — I was freezing the moment just before the scream.
The Hole That Longed for Wholeness
When I call it “unholey comfort,” I mean it literally.
It was the comfort that sealed off my sacred holes — the wounds that, if left open to air and light, could have become portals of grace.
Healing requires airflow.
Numbing traps infection.
Incest leaves behind an invisible wound — not just in the body, but in the soul.
It tears a hole in your sense of self-worth, trust, and belonging. Addiction becomes the bandage you use to hide the hole — the “fix” that keeps you from feeling how empty it truly is.
But no amount of alcohol, affection, or adrenaline can fill a hole made of grief.
The only thing that can heal it is presence — the very thing addiction steals.
The Moment I Stopped Patching
My turning point didn’t come in a clinic or a 12-step meeting.
It came in silence.
One night, I sat on my bathroom floor — shaking, sweating, coming down hard — and I realized I was tired of fighting myself. I whispered out loud,
“God, I’m not asking for comfort anymore. I’m asking for courage.”
And that was the night I stopped patching the hole.
I let it breathe.
That moment didn’t make me sober overnight. But it changed my relationship with myself. I began to see addiction not as my enemy, but as my teacher.
It showed me every place inside me that still believed love meant pain.
It showed me how far I’d go to avoid my own truth.
It showed me that the only way out was through.
Recovery: Making the Hole Holy Again
Recovery, for me, isn’t just about staying sober — it’s about staying present.
It’s the daily choice to sit in the discomfort without abandoning myself.
That means facing what I once fled:
The loneliness that lives under the laughter.
The shame that hums beneath success.
The rage that pulses in the quiet.
Healing meant grieving what was lost — my innocence, my safety, my sense of belonging — and honoring what survived: my spirit.
Dr. Judith Herman once said,
“Recovery can only take place within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.”
That truth saved me.
Because addiction thrives in isolation, but healing blossoms in connection.
Therapy helped me find language for what my body had been screaming for decades.
Somatic work helped me reclaim the sensations I’d shut off.
Community helped me trust again.
And faith — not religious, but relational — helped me remember that I was never meant to fill the hole; I was meant to let it be holy.
Embodied Reflection Prompts: Turning Toward the Hole
What is your “unholey comfort”?
(What do you use to escape, soothe, or silence what hurts most?)
Where do you feel the “hole” in your body?
(Notice sensations without judgment. Does it ache, tighten, tingle, or feel numb?)
What would it mean to stop patching and start breathing into that space instead?
If your addiction could speak, what would it say it’s protecting you from?
What new comfort — sacred and safe — could begin to replace the old one?
Coming Home to Myself
Today, I no longer chase numbness — I court truth.
I let the holes in me breathe, knowing they are proof of what I’ve survived.
I don’t fill them anymore. I tend them.
Because the holes are not where I’m broken — they’re where the light got in.
Addiction once promised me peace, but all it gave me was distance from myself.
Healing taught me that peace was never something I could pour into a glass — it was something I had to grow inside the cracks.
Now, when pain visits, I sit with it.
When shame whispers, I listen.
When my past calls, I answer gently: “You can rest now.”
And little by little, I am learning that comfort doesn’t come from numbing reality — it comes from finally being real.
A Closing Benediction
To every survivor still reaching for something to take the edge off —
I see you.
You are not weak. You are wounded.
And your wounds are worthy of gentleness, not judgment.
The comfort you seek isn’t in the bottle, the needle, or the arms of the wrong person.
It’s in your breath. Your truth. Your courage to stay.
Let the holes remain open.
They are not your shame.
They are your story.
And in time, you’ll find — as I did — that even an unholey comfort can lead you back to holy healing.
Call to Action
If this reflection spoke to you, visit HoleyHouse.com
for trauma-informed resources and survivor-guided healing tools.
You’ll find guided practices for emotional regulation, somatic safety, and relational repair — all designed to help you stop running and start resting in your truth.
You don’t need to fill the holes anymore.
You just need to remember — they were always holy.