Blueprints in the Wilderness: The Karen and Albert Story

Legal Disclaimer: The following is my retelling of events from my perspective and memory. Names have been changed for privacy. Any mention of companies, including Mattress Firm, reflects solely my individual experience and should not be construed as representative of the company as a whole.

The overwhelming response to my previous posts (Blueprints In The Wilderness Part 1& 2) has been both humbling and eye-opening. Text messages, Facebook comments, private messages—all asking about the same thing: “What happened with Karen and Albert?” Today, I’m pulling back the curtain on what became my first major betrayal in adulthood, the moment I began to understand how my neurodivergency, people-pleasing nature, and church-raised background could be catastrophically misinterpreted as something else entirely.

Let me be crystal clear from the start: I am the villain in this story. Karen and Albert were simply living their lives, navigating their marriage and new parenthood. I hold nothing but love and respect for them, and I want no hate directed their way. If anything, they were the honest ones in this story. This is my reckoning, my truth, my lesson learned in the wilderness of early adulthood.

Fresh Meat in the Adult World

Picture this: a barely-21-year-old walking into the fluorescent-lit showroom of a mattress store, completely unaware she was about to enter what felt like a slaughterhouse. I had stumbled into Mattress Firm after a chance encounter with Albert during my PetSmart days. He was charismatic and kind, effortlessly building rapport that salespeople do. “If you ever want to make good money,” he had said with a smile, “you should work here.”

So I did what any naive young adult would do—I applied online, went through the entire interview process alone, and got hired. Albert had planted a seed; I grew it myself. When they asked if anyone had referred me, I mentioned him, knowing he’d get some sort of referral bonus. That was the extent of his involvement in my hiring.

What I walked into was a revelation about the “real adult world” that no homeschooled, church-raised missionary school dropout could have prepared for. Everyone was actually an adult—thirty-plus with established lives, houses, cars, spouses, and children—multiple children. Lives built over decades that I was stumbling into with my fresh-faced twenty-one years and a mortgage I could barely understand.

The term “fresh meat” suddenly made visceral sense. Fifty to a hundred grown men in this interconnected mattress ecosystem—employees, warehouse workers, vendors—all looking at the new girl with the same predatory calculation. Even after everything that happened with Karen and Albert, especially after I found my voice, I lost count of how many times I had to tell married men with wedding rings gleaming on their fingers to leave my store and go home to their wives.

The mattress world, I learned, was essentially one big secret adult playground. But then again, as I’ve discovered, so is every workplace—restaurants, hotels, offices. Life revolves around sex. This was my crash course in a reality my sheltered upbringing had never even hinted at.

The Training Ground of Manipulation

Mattress Firm’s training program was like a masterclass in psychological manipulation. If you want to understand how easily minds can be hacked, work in sales with people who’ve been perfecting the art for twenty to thirty years. They’ll teach you the neuroscience of persuasion, the subtle ways to slip past someone’s defenses.

I was disturbingly good at it. So good that after convincing a sweet older couple to finance over $42,000 in mattress equipment over 72 months, my moral compass finally kicked in. I stared at that contract, at their trusting faces, and realized I had just sentenced them to years of payments for a bed. That was the beginning of the end of my mattress career, but not before it taught me everything I needed to know about how easily people—including myself—could be manipulated.

The job itself was a special kind of torture designed to break you down. Hour-long drives in pre-dawn darkness to sit alone in an empty showroom for ten hours, then drive home in darkness again. The isolation was crushing. Some days, I wouldn’t see a single customer. I’d sit there with a large Pizza Hut pizza and a two-liter of Mountain Dew, living off sugar and sodium while my body expanded like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka.

By the time I hit 230 pounds on my 5’5″ frame, I was a perfect target for anyone offering hope, friendship, or attention.

The Phone Lines of Connection

In this desert of isolation, the phones became lifelines. Every Mattress Firm store had its number, and calling between stores for hours was not just allowed—it was survival. I’d call Karen’s store and talk for two hours, then call Morgan’s store for another two. If a customer walked in, you’d simply say “I have a customer” and hang up. No offense taken. It was the culture.

Karen and I started there—store-to-store phone calls that slowly evolved into FaceTime sessions. She’d stay on video while I helped customers, or I’d have her on while doing chores at home. It was the kind of intimate, constant communication that modern female friendships thrive on. She could see my world; I could see hers.

This went on for months until our friendship graduated to something more substantial. Karen and Albert, I discovered, were the party couple of our district. Despite having a newborn, their reputation as the fun house preceded them. They were the cool early-thirties couple that all the bitter forty-something men with wives they resented would flock to on weekends.

The Invitation

When I finally got invited to one of their parties, I did what socially inexperienced people do—I showed up exactly on time. Seven o’clock invitation meant 6:50 arrival in my world. I had my face done, hair perfect, outfit carefully selected, drinks and food prepared. I was ready.

The party filled up normally until, suddenly, everyone disappeared. Karen and I stood alone in the kitchen as the entire crowd migrated to the garage. Her coy smile and hesitant explanation—”Everyone’s outside smoking cannabis”—was a test. I could see her measuring my reaction, determining whether I was safe or judgmental.

I had never touched cannabis in my life, but I also wasn’t interested in being the prude who ruined everyone’s fun. “I don’t smoke, but it’s fine if everyone else does,” became my entry ticket into their world.

What followed in that garage was culture shock of the highest order. Twenty adults passing joints in a circle while I stood there feeling like I was back in ninth grade, trying to blend into a world I didn’t understand. But blending in was something I’d mastered—a survival skill from my unconventional upbringing.

The Complication of Mark

Around this time, I started seeing Mark—a church musician and fellow salesperson who was nearly forty with two kids and a fresh divorce. In my naive twenty-one-year-old mind, I believed this man genuinely cared about me. I thought his attention was love, not the temporary satisfaction I now understand it was.

This relationship created the first tension with Karen. During one of our kitchen conversations, she asked directly if I was seeing Mark. I denied it, unsure about company policies and wanting to keep my private life private. But Karen knew I was lying. The proof came later when I realized Mark had been taking photos of me—specifically, a photo of my back that he’d shared around the company. The predatory game of “look what I conquered that no one else could” was already in motion.

Karen had seen the photo. She knew the truth. My denials only made things worse.

The Weight Loss Journey

Despite the tension, Karen and I embarked on something that transformed both our lives—a weight loss journey. But it was more than that. For the first time in my life, someone spoke to me about health and nutrition without shame or judgment. Karen explained calories, moderation, and lifestyle changes in the kindest, gentlest way anyone had ever discussed my weight.

We became accountability partners in the truest sense. I could call her and confess to eating three slices of cake, and she’d laugh and admit to eating four. No judgment. No shame. Just encouragement to make better choices tomorrow.

As I lost fifty pounds, then sixty, then seventy, something extraordinary happened—I experienced a pretty privilege for the first time in my life. Doors opened. Men bought me drinks. Strangers were kinder. The world treated me differently, and I was intoxicated by the attention.

This transformation set the stage for everything that followed.

The Chicken-Cutting Incident

The infamous chicken-cutting incident—if you’ve read my previous posts, you know this moment. If not, here’s the essence: Karen and I were meal prepping in my kitchen, cutting raw chicken, when she asked me a question about Albert. I answered honestly. She got angry and left, and right after that, Albert called and we had a serious, aggressive verbal conversation. I was left standing in my kitchen, confused and hurt, wondering what I’d done wrong.

This wasn’t some neurodivergent outburst or inappropriate comment. We were friends who talked every day about everything. That’s why we were meal prepping together in the first place. But something in my response crossed a line I didn’t even know existed.

The Descent

After a few awkward weeks, things seemingly returned to normal. But something had shifted. Karen’s work schedule changed, and slowly—so slowly I barely noticed—I started spending time alone with Albert, with Karen’s approval. 

“I’m not home, but you can go smoke with Albert if you want,” became a regular refrain. What started as a couple of hours of hanging out turned into spending entire days off at their house. The slippery slope was so gradual, so natural-seeming, that I didn’t recognize it as the calculated grooming it was.

This is when the conversations started taking a darker turn. The suggestions became more explicit. The idea of joining them as a couple—sexually, not romantically—began floating in the air like smoke from their ever-present joints.

The Snapchat Spiral and Crossing Lines

I was insecure, heavy (though losing weight), depressed, and neurodivergent. These people had been kind to me, had set me on a journey that made me feel better about myself than I had in years. I was eating clean, plant-based, full of energy, and motivation. For the first time, I felt attractive, worthy of attention.

So when the Snapchat messages started—innocent at first, then increasingly provocative—I found myself torn between my moral compass and my desperate hunger for validation.

I’m not proud of this, but I’ll admit it: I loved the attention. I reveled in feeling wanted, desired, and beautiful. But even as I enjoyed the validation, I knew in my heart I would never cross the physical line. My moral compass, planted deep in childhood, kept me tethered to some version of right and wrong.

At parties, they began pushing alcohol with increasing persistence, insisting they could make drinks so sweet I wouldn’t taste the liquor. I consistently refused—at this point in my life, I didn’t drink at all. But I was smoking enormous amounts of cannabis, and not in a healthy, medicinal way. I want to be clear: I don’t have a problem with cannabis as medication for those who use it appropriately. But in my case, I was abusing it as a substance to cope with my depression, my insecurity, and my complete inability to handle the adult world I’d stumbled into. I was using it as a drug to escape my reality rather than face it, and like any substance abuse, it was clouding my judgment and making me more vulnerable to manipulation.

This went on for a while, them sending a snap, me sending one back, the conversations growing more explicit through screens and pixels. I loved the attention at twenty-one, having never received any real validation before. But I knew, even then, that I would never actually follow through.

The questions became more direct. The ideas were presented to me more explicitly—getting involved with them as a couple, but in a sexual context. Having a threesome. This dynamic between us had always been a “we” situation—an open and honest exploration that included both Karen and Albert. They were transparent about what they wanted, and I was being dishonest about my intentions while enjoying the attention and validation their interest provided.

One night, I sent a Snapchat and received one back that crossed a moral compass line in my mind—a line I chose to cross consensually, fully aware I was sending and receiving inappropriate messages. Nothing physical happened; everything was over phones, through screens. But I knew I’d entered territory that fundamentally changed something inside me.

I’ll never forget that moment when I realized this was probably the point of no return. What had started as harmless flirting and me seeking attention had evolved into something I couldn’t take back. That moral compass we talked about earlier was teetering, and I could feel myself being pulled toward a choice I wasn’t ready to make.

Once they saw that side of me—once they confirmed it was there—they decided to try to bring it out. The pressure intensified. The invitations became more frequent. And I found myself making excuses, blaming my weight, saying “when I’m skinnier, I’ll do it” or “when I lose fifty more pounds” or “when I get to my goal weight.” I was internalizing all the pressure and turning it against myself, not understanding that I could simply say no and mean it.

From their perspective, they weren’t seeing anything wrong—just an insecure girl who needed more encouragement. So they continued encouraging me to lose weight, I continued feeling great about myself, and they continued their slow, persistent efforts. They were being honest, clearly stating what they wanted. I was the one being dishonest.

This went on for a while—this dance of temptation and resistance, of wanting the attention while knowing I could never follow through. I was playing with fire, and everyone involved knew it.

The Lunch That Changed Everything

The day Albert and I went to lunch with his baby was orchestrated like a carefully planned fantasy. By this point, our friendship had evolved to where I was spending entire days at their house on my days off. What had started as a couple of hours of hanging out had gradually expanded into me becoming a regular fixture in their daily routine?

I remember the feeling of that day so vividly—it was almost like the devil himself was showing me a preview of what I could have. Here was this picture-perfect family scene, and I was being invited to step into it. We went to lunch, just the three of us, and I found myself playing house in the most literal sense. Albert was charming and attentive, the baby was sweet and well-behaved, and for those few hours, I could pretend this was my life.

The words “couple” or “playing house” were never actually spoken during lunch, but the invitation hung in the air like humidity on a Georgia summer day. It was all glances, looks, and feelings—the kind of unspoken communication that someone who’s neurodivergent either completely misses or reads far too much into. In this case, the message was crystal clear.

When we returned to their house, the baby needed a nap after our meal. Their home was a typical one-story ranch-style house with an open-concept living room that flowed into the kitchen. There was a hallway that led to the bedrooms—the first door on the left was a guest room, the second door was another guest room that doubled as a game room, then you made a hard right turn to reach the baby’s room, bathroom, and their master bedroom at the end of the hall.

I found myself in the living room, lying across a large yoga ball they kept there, my stomach resting on top of it. I was wearing my usual gray dress—the same flowy, long dress I wore almost every day because it was one of the few things that fit properly during my weight loss transformation. The dress came down to my knees, and I was completely covered, though for some reason that day, I hadn’t worn shorts underneath like I normally did. Probably because I didn’t have any that fit properly, which was why I relied so heavily on that one dress.

I was positioned in the corner where the living room met the kitchen area, tucked into that space where the open concept created natural boundaries. Albert had gone to put the baby down for her nap, walking down that hallway toward the nursery.

When he came back, walking from the bedroom area toward the kitchen, I was directly in his path but not blocking it. He could have turned left into the living room, right toward the garage or front door, or continued straight past me into the kitchen with plenty of clearance. Instead, as he walked by me, he reached down and flipped up the back of my dress in one swift motion—the way you might flip back covers on a bed—exposing the back of my legs and my underwear.

I immediately sat up, startled and adjusting my dress, trying to process what had just happened. As I was getting my bearings and pulling my dress back down, my phone pinged with a notification. Albert had continued his path around the open concept, making his way back toward the hallway, and he’d ducked into that first guest room.

I looked down at my phone and saw a fresh photo he had just taken of himself in that guest room—a photo that left no doubt about his intentions or his state of mind. I looked up to see him walking back out of the guest room, headed back toward the living room, and the words just tumbled out of my mouth: “You just cheated on your wife.”

The moment hung there between us like a bomb that had been dropped but hadn’t exploded yet. This was the line crossed, the point where everything that had been building for months suddenly became undeniably real and immediate.

The Moment of Truth and the Breaking Point

Albert brushed off my accusation with the arrogant dismissiveness of someone who thought he was dealing with a naive child. “Oh my god, Rachael, no, I didn’t,” he said, quickly changing the subject. “Let’s go outside and smoke. Don’t you want to go outside and smoke?”

It wasn’t an unusual suggestion—we had planned to smoke after he put the baby down, so it followed our normal routine. But everything felt different now. What made this moment so devastating wasn’t just what Albert had done—it was the fundamental shift in our dynamic. Throughout this entire journey, the conversations, the suggestions, and the slow escalation had always been presented as a “we” situation. Karen and Albert, as a couple, are exploring the possibility of including me in their relationship. They had been honest about that dynamic, and I had been dishonest about my willingness to participate.

But now, Albert was propositioning me exclusively—just him, not including Karen. This broke from their previous pattern of openness and honesty. This wasn’t about exploring a shared fantasy anymore; this was Albert actively trying to cheat on his wife, and I was unwilling to be a part of that. The shift from “we” to “just us” was the final line for me, and it confirmed every instinct that had been screaming at me to get out of this situation.

I just wanted to get out of that room, away from the weight of what had just happened.

As we walked outside to their back porch, my mind was racing with the impossible complexity of my situation. These weren’t just random people I’d met at a bar—they were my coworkers, my mentors, my only real friends in Georgia. Albert and Karen had been nothing but kind to me since the day I’d walked into that mattress store. They’d taken me under their wing when I was just the fresh-faced new girl who didn’t know anything about sales, about adult relationships, about navigating workplace dynamics.

They had saved me from me. When I was drowning in depression, eating pizza every day, and hating my 230-pound body, Karen had spoken to me about health and nutrition with more kindness than anyone ever had in my life. Together, they’d helped me lose over a hundred pounds, given me confidence I’d never had, and made me feel beautiful for the first time in my existence.

And it wasn’t like they were strangers I could just walk away from. I worked with both of them every single day. Albert was well-respected in the company, Karen was beloved by everyone, and I was still the newest person trying to prove myself in a male-dominated sales environment. Everyone at Mattress Firm saw us together constantly—at company meetings, at parties, hanging out during our breaks. To the outside world, we were the trio that came as a package deal.

How could I possibly explain to my coworkers, my managers, my entire professional network, that I was suddenly cutting ties with the two people who had become my closest friends? How could I tell anyone what had happened without sounding like I was making accusations against two people who had done nothing but help me? Who would believe me? And what if they turned everyone against me?

I was twenty-one years old, barely holding onto a job I desperately needed to pay my mortgage, in a company where I knew no one else well enough to confide in. These people weren’t just my friends—they were my lifeline in an adult world I was still figuring out how to navigate.

But as Albert launched into what I now recognize as a masterful sales pitch, I felt something deeper stirring inside me. For months, I had been struggling with how to extract myself from this situation. Even though I wasn’t a practicing Christian at the time, I wasn’t openly talking about faith or spirituality, but I kept thinking about karma—about reaping what you sow. That moral compass planted in my childhood kept whispering that this was wrong, but I hadn’t known how to voice it or escape it gracefully.

As we smoked together—just the two of us taking our time with the ritual—Albert began explaining exactly what he wanted. He didn’t deny what had just happened, but he rephrased it entirely. No, he hadn’t cheated on his wife, he insisted. When I pressed him about the other women I’d heard about through the Mattress Firm rumor mill, he was surprisingly candid.

Yes, he admitted, he had slept with some of those women. Some of them Karen knew about—they were “in on it together,” he explained. Others, Karen didn’t know about. He painted a picture of their marriage that was both intimate and transactional, explaining that he and Karen had met playing video games and had this very special, unique love story that I found genuinely sweet and beautiful as a gamer myself.

But their marriage, he explained, wasn’t threatened by sex with other people. He loved his wife. He loved his child. He had no intention of breaking up their family or leaving Karen. What he wanted from me was purely physical—just sex, nothing more, nothing less.

“I only want sex with you,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing the weather. “I love my wife. I love my child. I don’t want to break up our marriage or our family. This wouldn’t change anything between Karen and me.”

We were outside for maybe five to ten minutes, and I found myself drowning in the complexity of it all. Here was this man who had been nothing but kind to me, who had helped transform my life, calmly explaining why everything I’d been taught about right and wrong was just old-fashioned thinking. And the terrifying part was that part of me wanted to believe him. Part of me wanted to think that maybe I was just being prudish, that maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal. After all, they had been so good to me. They had changed my life. Who was I to judge their marriage or their choices?

But then, as clearly as if someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me awake, I heard a voice in my head—not my voice, but something stronger and more certain than I’d ever experienced. It was screaming at me with absolute clarity: You know you want out of this. You know this is how you’re going to get out of it. Just tell the truth.

At that moment, all the complexity fell away. All the fear about work, about friendships, about what people would think—none of it mattered. What mattered was that I knew, in the deepest part of my soul, that this was wrong. Not wrong because someone had told me it was wrong, but wrong because it violated something fundamental about who I was and who I wanted to be.

I opened my mouth, and the words poured out like water through a broken dam:

“No. I would never do that. I love Karen. I love her so much, I would never do that to her. I would never want to not trust a female friend around my husband. I would never want to sneak behind her back. To be honest with you, I never wanted to sleep with you. I never wanted to sleep with you guys. I didn’t know how to tell you no. I’ve been lying to you guys this entire time and blaming it on my weight. I’ve never wanted this. I don’t believe in it. I’m a Christian—I know you don’t think so, but this is how I was raised, and I do a very poor job of showing it or explaining it right now, but this is a line I cannot cross and I will not cross. I’m sorry that I lied to you. I’m very sorry that I led you on. I’m sorry that I sent inappropriate messages on Snapchat, even though I knew they were wrong. I’m sorry that I reveled in the attention I was receiving from both of you. I genuinely wanted a pure, innocent connection with Karen, but I cannot have it in this perverted version that we’ve all created.”

The transformation in Albert was immediate and chilling. The charming, rapport-building salesman disappeared entirely, replaced by someone cold and calculating. He told me I was close-minded, that it was “how and where” I was raised. Everyone in California wasn’t like this, he insisted. Everyone in California was open-minded. It wasn’t that big of a deal. This was normal. This was okay.

When intimidation didn’t work—when his attempts to gaslight me into believing I was the problem fell flat—he switched back to Mr. Smiley Guy, probably thinking his sales technique would now shift to charm me into compliance.

But I wasn’t budging. The conversation came to its natural end as we finished smoking, and we both went back inside to the kitchen. I immediately made some lame excuse about needing to go home—I had to let my dogs out, or change the oil in my car, or some other transparent lie.

Albert laughed it off with practiced ease. “Hey, don’t make this weird,” he said. “Don’t let this be something in our friendship that it’s not.”

Of course, I lied and agreed. “No, we won’t. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you later. I’ll call you later. I just have to go home and let my dogs out.”

I walked through their garage to my car, got in, and drove away. Knowing right then and there, I would never return. The moment I was alone, an overwhelming sense of relief washed over me—like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders, weight I didn’t even know I was carrying. It had been building brick by brick, choice by choice, compromise by compromise until I was carrying a burden I couldn’t even identify.

I knew then, and I know now with absolute certainty, that it was the Holy Spirit who gave me that revelation to tell the truth. That voice wasn’t mine—it was stronger, clearer, and more certain than anything I’d ever experienced. It gave me the wisdom and clarity in that moment to do what I needed to do to get out of that situation safely. I wasn’t praying, wasn’t an active Christian, wasn’t calling on God for help. But that moral compass planted in childhood, that foundation laid by parents who raised me “in the way I should go,” kicked in at the moment I needed it most.

The Unraveling and What Came After

When I got home that day, I did something completely out of character—I didn’t call Karen. We were in constant communication, talking multiple times every day, and I would always call or message her after spending time at their house, even when it was just hanging out with Albert and the baby. My sudden silence was a departure from our established pattern that I’m sure felt jarring and suspicious.

I believe this unexpected quiet is what initially triggered Karen’s suspicions, leading her to go home and search through Albert’s phone. Karen was no fool—she was intelligent, intuitive, and deeply in tune with the people she cared about. When someone who calls you every day suddenly goes silent after spending time with your husband, red flags naturally go up.

About two days later, still trying to process everything that had happened, I attempted to FaceTime Karen while I was at work. The call went unanswered. I never heard back. This was the beginning of a silence that would stretch between us, punctuated only by my repeated attempts to reach out and explain.

I continued trying to contact Karen for years afterward, apologizing and trying to explain my side of the story. Each attempt was met with either silence or brief, painful conversations where I could feel the gulf between us growing wider.

Many years later, Karen finally told me what had happened on her end that day. After I left their house, she had gone home and, following her instincts looked through Albert’s phone. There she found the picture he had sent me—the explicit photo that confirmed her worst fears about what had transpired between her husband and her best friend.

It was later confirmed to me—once by Albert at work and later by Karen herself—that Albert had denied the entire event, claiming we were just hanging out and nothing inappropriate had happened. But because Karen had seen the picture with her own eyes, she drew her conclusions about what had taken place. The feeling she felt that day, combined with my sudden and uncharacteristic silence, only served to confirm her fears and suspicions.

Many months after the incident, I did tell the truth to two close coworkers at Mattress Firm. I shared my side of the story, hoping they would never repeat it, but also knowing that if they did, at least the truth would be out there. By this time, I didn’t care what other Mattress Firm employees thought about me. I had already realized that I didn’t want to work there anymore due to the psychological manipulation I was learning to use on people, convincing them to spend large amounts of money on what was essentially a “bag of polyurethane foam.”

My time at Mattress Firm ended abruptly due to an emergency gallbladder surgery caused by the massive amount of recent weight loss I had experienced. This medical emergency would become the bridge to the next chapter of my story, one that would take me even deeper into the wilderness but also closer to understanding who I was.

I never made physical contact with either of them sexually. The “fragments of memory” I mentioned in previous posts weren’t about drunken nights or sleeping around—they were about waking up with the crushing weight of poor choices and wondering why I’d allowed myself to get so close to crossing lines I never intended to cross.

Karen was a new mother, newly married, living halfway across the country with no friends or family nearby. She found herself caught between her husband and her best friend in an impossible situation that no one should ever have to navigate. When faced with that choice, she chose her marriage, and I don’t blame her one bit. I respect her for it. She was protecting herself, her child, and her family in the only way she knew how.

I’ve spoken to Jesus extensively about these choices over the years, asked for forgiveness, and gone through deliverance to break any soul ties formed during this time. Anything I say here cannot be used against me—I’ve already run to the Father about it.

I want to be clear about my use of the word “grooming.” I was not a minor. But grooming is a process—the active verb of taking someone innocent and manipulating them through slow, meticulous steps to get what you want. That’s exactly what happened, whether consciously or not.

The Voice That Saved Me and the Wilderness Lessons

In my darkest moment outside on that back porch, when manipulation masqueraded as love and when my desperate hunger for acceptance nearly cost me everything I believed about myself, someone cared enough to get me out. That someone was the still, small voice of truth that cut through the haze of cannabis smoke, the weight of loneliness, and the intoxicating promise of belonging.

That voice gave me the words to save myself when I didn’t even know I needed saving. It didn’t come from my strength, my wisdom, or my ability to navigate complex adult situations. It came from something planted deep in childhood—a moral compass that pointed true north even when I was lost in the wilderness of early adulthood.

Twenty-one-year-old me thought she was sophisticated enough to handle adult situations. She thought she could play with fire and not get burned. She confused manipulation for care, attention for love, and proximity for friendship. She believed that being wanted to be meant being loved, and that being included meant being valued.

Thirty-something me understands that neurodivergency can make us vulnerable to predators who mistake our people-pleasing and genuine warmth for sexual availability. I learned that “no” is a complete sentence, that consent can be given and withdrawn, and that my moral compass—planted in childhood—was the truest thing about me even when I was trying to ignore it.

In that suburban garage in Auburn, Georgia, surrounded by the smoke of cannabis and the haze of manipulation, I heard the voice that would guide me home. It took a few more years of wandering, a few more mistakes, and a lot more growing up, but that moment—when truth cut through deception like a sword—became the blueprint for every major decision that followed.

The wilderness teaches us that we are never as alone as we think we are, and we are never as lost as we feel. Sometimes salvation comes in the form of our own voice, finally brave enough to speak the truth that sets us free. Sometimes it comes as the still, small voice of a God who planted seeds of righteousness in us long before we knew we’d need them to survive.

Karen, Albert, and I all learned different lessons in that wilderness. They learned that marriage requires honesty, boundaries, and the courage to protect what matters most. I learned that integrity isn’t just about the big moments—it’s built into the small choices, the daily decisions to tell the truth even when it’s uncomfortable, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

The blueprint I found in that wilderness wasn’t just about escaping one difficult situation. It was about building a foundation for every decision that would follow—a commitment to honesty, to boundaries, to listening to that voice of truth even when it asks us to do hard things, say difficult words, or walk away from situations that promise everything we think we want but cost us everything we need.

In the end, the wilderness didn’t destroy me. It revealed who I really was underneath all the people-pleasing, all the desperate hunger for acceptance, all the lies I told myself about what I was willing to compromise. And in that revelation, I found my way home to the person I was always meant to be—someone brave enough to tell the truth, strong enough to stand alone, and wise enough to listen when love calls her name.

Sometimes we have to get lost before we can be found. Sometimes we have to face our own capacity for deception before we can embrace radical honesty.