I t was supposed to be the happiest time of my life: I had moved from New York City to Washington, DC, to enroll in a graduate program in international relations at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. My career was on track. My health was good. And oh, yes: I was engaged to a kind, brilliant, charming, and honest man, a Navy doc who was opening hospitals for pediatric cancer patients in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Life was rocking — except for my gnawing suspicion that the sweet, noble doctor might not be as sweet (or noble) as he’d purported to be. Was he really a former Navy SEAL? Could he really have rescued his ex-wife when she was held hostage in Iran? I questioned almost every utterance that came out of his mouth; he, in turn, attacked me for having “trust issues.” I began second-guessing everything about myself, my beliefs, and my perceptions; not only could I not trust him, but I could no longer trust myself.
Twelve months into the relationship, I left. I couldn’t live in that liminal space between fact and fiction and not know which was which. I then promptly beat myself up for being such a horrible, mistrusting commitment-phobe. Why did I have to be so suspicious? Why couldn’t I have a normal relationship like other people?
Besides the emotional despair, there were logistical issues. The future I’d anticipated was suddenly derailed. I’d given up my place in Manhattan, I had no money, and nowhere to go. Plus, I still had classes and work to deal with. Now what was I supposed to do?
Come up with a plan. Figure it out.
So I did. I wrangled a magazine assignment about Washington hotels, which I clearly had to test out in person. I commuted to DC once a week by bus and continued my studies at Hopkins. I sold my engagement ring (which, for the record, I tried to return to my ex but he told me to keep) and even began dating again. In short, I turned lemons into lemon meringue pie. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t pleasant, but I refused to let some guy bring me down, even if he was a war hero.
A year and a half after I left him, he was arrested for writing fraudulent prescriptions for narcotics. Not only had he forged the names of his colleagues at the Pentagon (where he actually did work), but also those of his deceased relatives, his former father-in-law, a smattering of fictional counterparts — and me. He had not been a SEAL nor any kind of special operative; he met his ex-wife in medical school. After the shock wore off, elation set in. I’d been right to dump him; the dude was bad! (The woman he was engaged to — while he was engaged to me — agreed.) He spent the next two years in prison, and I ended up writing a book about deception, based largely on that experience.
What I went through was traumatic and, clearly, psychologically damaging. But I did learn a few things from it, most notably how resourceful I am. Rather than flee the country in humiliation and despair, I figured a way out of a hole. I didn’t give up on my goals; I just rejiggered them.
In a strange way, it was very similar to what is going on today with the coronavirus: Nobody really knows what the real story is, or who is giving us the straight facts, or how everything is going to play out. Our heads are all spinning. On the other hand, no one died in my story. And I didn’t have to self-isolate (though I wanted to). My small world was spinning out of control, yes. But it didn’t feel like the end of the world.
The word for this is “resilience,” derived from the Latin word resilire, meaning to rebound. And it’s a skill — yes, skill — we need to develop.