The God They Praised, The Monster I Survived

Written by Lindsey Leavitt, Transformational Coach

Lindsey Leavitt is a transformational coach. Her expertise stems from her lived experience of abuse, mental illness, and chronic pain. Lindsey's transformation has inspired her to utilize her knowledge and abilities as an artist/musician to advocate, empower, and lift others.

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I was just a child sitting at a desk that felt too big for me, feet swinging above the floor, pretending I understood the lesson. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, the clock ticked too loudly, and the teacher’s voice floated in and out like a distant radio signal I couldn’t quite tune into.

Everyone else seemed fine.

Everyone else seemed present.

But inside me, something was wrong.

My heartbeat was too fast for no reason.

My breath sat high in my chest.

My eyes kept darting to the door, the windows, the shadows in the corners of the room, searching for danger no one else could see.

The teacher asked a question. Pencils scratched. Books flipped. And all I could think was: Why can’t I focus? Why can’t I understand what she’s saying? Why does it feel like something is chasing me when I’m just sitting still?

I didn’t know the word for hypervigilance yet.

I didn’t know what trauma was.

I didn’t know that my brain had already been rewired for survival.

All I knew was that there was a battle going on inside me, a war I never asked to fight, and somehow, I was the only one who could feel it.

The other kids laughed. Passed notes. Lived in a world where the biggest danger was a pop quiz.

But I sat there in silence, training myself to scan, to brace, to endure.

A soldier disguised as a little girl.

A child learning to survive instead of learning to add and subtract.

The world thought he was my protector.

But he was the one who put the war in me.

I didn’t have the language back then to explain why my hands shook when the classroom door opened, or why loud voices made my ribs tighten. I only knew that something inside me was not okay. Something had been taken from me long before I could understand what it was.

And while the other kids learned spelling words and multiplication tables, I learned how to disappear. How to stay small. How to carry secrets that were too big for my body.

That was the beginning.

Not the first wound, but the first time I realized I was alone in the fight.

The shadows that followed me

Years later, I stood beside him in the kitchen, a teenager cutting fruit on the counter. The house was quiet. Too quiet. The air between us felt wrong in a way I couldn’t name yet. His presence behind me made my skin prickle, the same way it had in that classroom when alarms rang inside my chest.

I kept slicing, pretending to be fine.

But suddenly, a jolt of dread slammed through me so hard I almost dropped the knife.

My mind said nothing.

My body screamed run.

It didn’t make sense.

I was old enough to think I should feel safe.

Old enough to be told he was a “good man,” a “father figure,” someone who “loved me.”

But standing there in that kitchen, I felt the truth in the tremble of my hands:

My body remembered what my mind could not.

I didn’t have flashbacks yet.

Only fear.A deep, bone-level panic that whispered:

Get away. Get away. Get away.

I ignored it because I had spent my whole childhood being trained to ignore it.

But the truth always finds a way back.

The night my body ran without me

Years later, as an adult, I stayed overnight at my parents’ house, the place everyone called “home,” the place they said was safe, the place where he prayed over me, laid hands on me, and pretended to be holy.

I tried to sleep downstairs in the guest room.

But every time I closed my eyes, something inside me jolted awake.

My breath grew sharp.

My heart hammered.

My skin crawled.

I felt watched.

It was the same sensation as the kitchen.

The same sensation as the classroom.

The same war.

I kept telling myself I was overreacting, that I was imagining it.

But my body knew better.

Suddenly, I was up, running, literally running up the stairs, faster, faster, as if something was chasing me. I burst out the front door and into the night streets, barefoot, shaking, breathless.

I didn’t know why.

But my body did.

Years of dissociated memory had been buried deep.

But instinct never lies.

The flashbacks, the patterns, the truth

When the flashbacks cracked open, the pieces aligned.

The dread in my body was recognition.

The terror was memory.

The hypervigilance was survival.

I was never the unstable one.

I was never fragile.

I was never the source of the chaos.

I was the scapegoat, a decoy for the monster standing behind me.

He needed my breakdowns to validate his sainthood.

He needed my silence to protect his power.

He needed my confusion to sharpen his control.

He took me to therapy like he was delivering a problem to be solved.

He stood in the corner as a grieving parent, while doctors searched for the cause he already knew.

He wrapped his arms around me like a man shielding his child from the very danger he embodied.

He prayed with sincerity he never earned.

He cried tears he rehearsed.

It’s a paradox that splits the mind.

A contradiction so violent it makes reality ripple.

It rewrites memory, identity, truth itself, until you question not just what happened, but whether you’re allowed to trust your own thoughts at all.

It wasn’t madness.

It was orchestration.

It was indoctrination stitched into fatherhood.

It was psychological warfare wrapped in holiness.

And I walked out of it alive.

The vow

So, I make a vow to the little girl in the classroom, to the teenager whose hands shook over fruit and fear, to the woman running into the night:

I will love every version of her that survived what no one saw.

I will be the protector she prayed for in silence, the soft place she needed, the steady presence she waited for, the voice that finally whispers, “You were right. You were never crazy. You were hurting.”

Her story is woven into every beat of my heart.

Her courage is the reason I breathe.

Her pain is the reason I rise.

I will never abandon her again.

Because from the ashes of what she survived, from the silence she carried, from the war he placed inside her, I became the Guardian she never had.

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Read more from Lindsey Leavitt

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Lindsey Leavitt, Transformational Coach

Lindsey Leavitt is a transformational coach. She is certified in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The model focuses on emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and mindfulness. Lindsey battled with anxiety and depression throughout her life. She implemented various therapeutic modalities, but none were effective. Finally, Lindsey implemented the DBT approach, which changed her life forever. Now she is helping others take back their power, regain control of their lives, and start living an abundant life.