Acting out his pain in a treatment center helped him realize there was a path forward to a better, happier life

Part three of a four-part series.

I struck the plastic baseball bat against the soft square ottoman in the center of the room. Standing beside me, a tall Lakota man with a ponytail spoke quietly: “What are you feeling? Where is the pain now?”

Before us, a man and a woman stood arguing. “You cheap bastard! You have money for a nice car and nice clothes but no money for your kids?” the woman shouted.

“You’re always asking me for money. Do you think I’m made of money? You have no idea how hard I work!” the man shouted back.

As they yelled at one another, the tall man asked me: “Where is it now?”

I responded, “In my throat.”

“Then yell,” he said.

I yelled.

I had been skeptical about this exercise at first. But somewhere along my three-week treatment journey, I had decided to try to trust my counselors and throw myself into any exercise they put before me. So the day before I had spent hours in my room writing a script. The plan was simple: Think of a scene from your life that had caused you pain. Write out a script for people to reenact that scene. Then watch them reenact the scene while responding to it.

For my script, I had chosen a scene that had played out several times a week in my home — my parents fighting over money. The characters in my script would be my mom, my dad and my sister. My sister, however, would not have a speaking role. Like me, she would be there just to watch.

I then picked three people, other treatment clients, to play the roles. I picked a Lakota man in his 30s and a woman in her early 20s for my mom and dad and a younger, diminutive woman to play my sister. I agonized over every word, trying to remember some of the common accusations and responses I had heard so many times. I then handed my script to the actors.

The next morning, we began our group session the usual way. The burning of sage and a group prayer. We were then informed that my script was the only one that had been written in time for the therapy session. I had a moment of hesitation and frustration.

Again, I was the only one who had done the work, the only who had wholeheartedly thrown himself into the assignment. It had been that way throughout the treatment cycle. Maybe it was due to the fact that I was the only client there voluntarily. Everyone else has been court-ordered to be there.

Going into treatment willingly is something few from my community choose to do. When I told my family I was going to treatment, nearly all of them asked: What had I done to be ordered to attend treatment? When I told them nothing, that I was choosing to go because I needed to quit drinking, they looked incredulous.

One cousin, a drinking buddy, expressed frustration that we wouldn’t drink together anymore and lamented I was leaving him behind. My mom refused to believe her son, her perfect little boy, could possibly be an alcoholic.

My father to this day doesn’t believe in the concept of alcoholism or addiction. To him, some people simply aren’t strong enough to handle their drink. In fact, when I had suggested that I might need treatment some months earlier, he had talked me out of it, concerned it would affect my grades.

When I finally went to treatment, I didn’t call him until I had been there a week. When I did, he again expressed concern over how this might affect my schooling and tried to talk me into leaving.

Inside the therapy room, the actors began taking their places while the non-actors in the room stood to the side. The man and the woman gripped the copies of my script in their hands.

A counselor, the tall man with the ponytail, stood to my left. He handed me the plastic bat, encouraged the actors to not be shy, to really dig into the script, and told them to begin.

“What do you want from me? I’ve already given you $50 this week. I don’t have any more money to give,” the man said loudly.

“But you’ve got money to eat out and drink at the bar?” the woman responded.

Immediately, I felt anxious, scared.

To my left, the counselor: “What do you feel? Where is the pain?”

I had to think for a moment about his question. I thought about where in my body I felt any discomfort. I realized that I felt discomfort in my throat. I told him so.

“Shout,” he said.

I mustered my courage and shouted. The two actors, who had by now dropped their scripts on the ground, continued yelling at each other. It became clear they didn’t need the scripts because they already knew the characters. As they argued, my counselor continued guiding me to where the discomfort was.

As he did, I would hit the ottoman in the center of the room with the plastic bat if I felt the nagging sensation in my arms. I would sometimes yell as I did so. Other times, if I felt the sensation in my legs, I would kick the ottoman. This went on for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only 15 or 20 minutes.

I thought about my parents arguing and the anger, stress and sadness it caused me and I released my pain through my voice, my arms, my legs. As this went on, my screams became primal, my strikes those of a man fighting for his life. I lost all sense of time and place. I forgot about the other people in the room. My entire world became the actors before me and the square ottoman that became the receptacle for the pain I had carried for far too long. Eventually, my voice became hoarse, my arms and legs fatigued. And when asked where the pain was, I answered emphatically: “In my stomach. I need to throw up.”

The actors halted their scene, and for the first time, I noticed the young woman who was given the role of my sister lying in a fetal position in a corner of the room. I ran to the bathroom and vomited. As I did, I felt a great weight leave my body.

Walking back into the therapy room, I noticed everyone had resumed their seats in the circle. The counselor who had guided me through the exercise stopped me.

“Now we’re going to give you a happy moment. You and the actor who played your father are going to talk to each other and apologize for the things you’ve done to one another and hug.”

I still hadn’t stopped thinking of the young man as my father, so the exercise wasn’t a difficult one. I walked up to him and I began apologizing for the wrongs I had committed against him.

“I’m sorry for having parties in your house and wrecking your things. I’m sorry for being rebellious and angry toward you,” I told him.

He smiled and responded: “I’m sorry for not being a better father. I’m sorry for not being kinder to you and for being abusive to you. I never meant to hurt you.”

“It’s OK” I said, walking up to him and hugging him. I embraced him for a long time, and as I did, I cried and realized just how much I had needed this.

I walked out of that room different. I began walking down the gravel road (perhaps one like the road in the public domain photo above, posted in wikimedia commons). For the first time in a long time, I thought about the future, about possibility. I began running. I felt truly free, like I could do anything. I imagined finishing college and becoming a writer, perhaps penning a novel and traveling, and eventually starting a family.

The way forward seemed open. Indeed, every step of the road seemed suddenly clear to me. I held out my arms, lifted my head to the sky and ran. I ran.

Kevin Abourezk is the deputy managing editor of Indian Country Today and an award-winning film producer who has spent his 24-year career in journalism documenting the lives, accomplishments and tragedies of Native American people. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of South Dakota and a master’s in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.