We are going to San Francisco this weekend. In less than 24 hours, Danny and I will be alone in a strange city together.
Tomorrow is our anniversary. Eleven years of marriage.
Eleven.
Eleven years really isn't THAT long, and yet -it's long enough to have three kids and almost lose each other.
Something hit me about a week ago -a hunger? a crazy urge? I don't know. All I know is that we booked some last-minute tickets, and The Word of the Week has been
MIRACLE
For the last few years, I haven't worn a wedding ring. I haven't been willing to DATE let alone go away for the weekend like we usually do for our anniversaries.
I've had people tell me I'm crazy to stay. I've had an inner voice tell me I'm crazy to stay.
Danny has had people tell him I'M crazy and he's crazy to try and stick it out with me.
Our critics have fallen into two categories:
1) Porn is normal, so come off it already
2) Porn is abominable, so leave already
It certainly doesn't make sense to people on the outside, and it doesn't have to. At the end of the day when we're with each other checking in and talking about things that would boggle the minds of people who think we're nuts... we feel at peace, we feel at home.
A few weeks ago, I caught Danny's eye as we were watching youtube videos as a family. I held his gaze, I held his hand, and the wordless connection was powerful -so powerful our eyes welled up.
We said "I love you."
But we didn't need to say it.
I've longed for a connection like that for YEARS. I don't expect it to be maintained constantly, but to know it's there, to know I have access to it, means the world to me.
Danny's been gone all week... he's training in Ohio, and I'm at home dealing with this ridiculous chronic illness, three kids, three dogs, and three cats, and one overflowing toilet.
Somehow we are all fed and thriving. Another miracle.
As he's been gone, I've felt some very old fears rise up within me. For so long, I didn't care what he did while he was away, but lately my heart has opened back up. I've learned that it's safe to begin to re-attach to Danny, and that is TERRIFYING because my muscle and brain memory tells me, "Loving means hurting."
That is TRUE.
But I'm learning that it isn't the end -that hurt can be a catalyst for growth, a chance for rigorous honesty as I express my feelings and needs, the gateway to an intimate experience with God. Pain is information to me.
Danny has proven to me through time that he's HERE, even if he doesn't understand fully what I'm going through, he's going to sit with me anyway.
And so I'm re-attaching.
Does that make me crazy?
It doesn't FEEL crazy, even if it looks crazy... and I know Danny will say the same thing.
This weekend signifies something huge.
It's showing us that we've made strides.
It's letting us know that we're brave enough to spend money on ourselves.
It's come naturally, unforced and definitely unplanned (what the heck do I even pack?!).
And as I've mulled over what this trip means about where we are in our relationship and in healing our relationship, I keep stumbling on immersive gratitude and the realization that recovery has brought about miracles in our marriage and lives.
I'll meet Danny as he lands in Phoenix from Ohio and before he can even set foot into the hot AZ sun, we will be on our way to Cali.
Alone.
Does this mean we've "made it?" That our marriage is in the clear? That it's time to "move on" and get passed this seemingly never-ending trial?
No, it doesn't mean any of those things.
Danny and I will never reach the "MADE IT" point, either together or individually. The more recovery work we do, the more we find TO DO, and it is the most rewarding, harrowing work we've ever done or ever will do!
Our marriage will never be in the clear. But what does that matter, if our faith lies in God and not in each other? It's a harsh, harsh thing to accept. It seems unfair and even unhealthy to some, but trusting in GOD and putting my faith, loyalty and love in HIM has proven to be the singularly most freeing act I've ever embarked on.
We will never move on from this trial, and I prefer it that way. I prefer a marriage where we acknowledge frailty, where we check in and focus on connection, where we hone in on God. I prefer a home of healing.
To the outside world, it's just a weekend getaway for our anniversary. It's as simple as that.
But to my world, and the world here in this little blog... it's a miracle, absolute, utter and completely.
Our critics have become a distant fog for us, and we're reaching forward and biting into this delicious, golden fruit called connection that has touched every facet of our lives.
And it means that I have more to surrender when he leaves on a business trip and stays alone in a hotel for a week.
It means risking being hurt more and again. It means more open hearts, more open arms, and more joy as well.
It feels right.
Today, it feels right.
Maybe I'll sing a different tune when I'm triggered in California, but I'll worry about that Golden Gate Bridge when I get there. Right now, I'm just going to hug the miracle.
And seriously, I need to pack.
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Connection Waves
As I've studied and worked on healing from addiction, I've come to see parts of marriage that I didn't even know were there.
I watched a TED talk today -one I've seen a few times -by Amy Cuddy all about Body Language (recommended to me by Scabs).
Sister Cuddy mentions an experiment in which subjects were asked to participate in an interview where the interviewer was basically expressionless. She says:
It so telling that we would rather have a negative connection than NO connection, but really? Connection is so very vital, something we crave because we NEED it -like air, food, water.
Danny and I are starting to get these glamorous, indulgent tastes of true, positive connection. It makes the relationship we had 7 years ago seem surface... not always bad, but definitely surface. It was the copper medal, and now we're touching gold.
Touching.
We spend about 30% of our time together touching gold.
35% falling away from the gold.
35% crawling back toward it.
_______________________________________________
100% of our marriage deals with connection (lack of, leaning toward, enjoying...)
I'm trying to learn how to be patient when Danny is stressed about something out of his control. My body -my smart, smart body -has retained a fancy sort of muscle memory where whenever Danny is stressed, I start protecting myself because I believe scary things inevitably follow.
This doesn't mean that Danny always acted out, but it does mean that his addict-related behaviors dominated the day, and those are very scary to me... mostly because I lose him in those moments (sometimes because I leave -figurative or literally, and sometimes because he does -figuratively, usually).
Losing Danny terrifies me. I love Danny.
Because I haven't been feeling well these days, I've spent a lot (A LOT) of time trying to reconcile my body to it's tenant: my spirit.
As I navigate the messages they're trying to send each other, as I dance the dance of moderation, listening, control, surrender...
I find that I spend
30% of my time in a healthy place
35% of my time falling out of a healthy place
35% of my time working my way BACK to a healthy place
__________________________________________________
100% of the relationship between my body and spirit deals with CONNECTION.
The relationship they have is JUST like a marriage. It's an intimate connection that takes work, dedication, loyalty, love, faith!
I find that my spirit left the presence of The Father to cleave to it's earthly body.
In my marriage, Danny and I both are trying -daily, and it is NOT always easy! -to keep God in the center of ourselves (first!) and our homes.
Inside of me, I am trying to keep my Spirit moving toward God and my Body moving toward God, hoping they will TOUCH GOLD.
And they do. They do touch gold 30% of the time.
I can imagine what it would feel like if I weren't so sick these days.
Connection is key. My body is speaking to me, and I'm learning to be patient as it works through the STUFF it's been holding for years.
As I lean into yoga poses, I feel FEAR in my body. It is terrified to simply OPEN UP because it knows, it KNOWS about pain and how pain comes after opening up.
My yoga instructor said on Monday morning, "Try to take this stretch somewhere you've never taken it. Maybe you're going to put more space between your head and chest. Maybe you'll be able to take the stretch deeper. Maybe you'll be able to feel a muscle in a way you haven't before. I know you've done this stretch a hundred times... so let's do it differently. We don't want to be the same as we were yesterday."
Everything Taura says sounds so deep when I'm on a mat in her Mom's backyard.
With that in mind, I adopted a new mantra to add to my list of Adopted Mantras:
Today will be different from the day before. I'll try something new, take in something new, learn something new! I'll make someone else's day different. I won't go to sleep at night knowing that I'm waking up the same as I woke up the day before. My expectations for this mantra are enthusiastically low, but enthusiastic nonetheless.
So I'm charging out into the world toward DIFFERENCE.
Sometimes it means adding. Sometimes it means taking away.
Mostly it means that I keep riding those percentages waves in the right direction -RIDING, mind you, not stagnating on the wave only to be squelched by the quenching water.
It's simply finding a way to progress while being patient and accepting of where I am in life: whether I'm in a GOLD day or not.
Will I ever reach a place where everyday will be gold? Perhaps The Land of Gold lies only in those with silver hair? I don't know. I don't know the answer.
But what I do know is that it's okay that I don't know. It's okay that I'm riding some waves because the waves are all CONNECTION based, and THAT... that is one sweet wave to ride, even if you're coming down.
PS: if you want to be different than you were yesterday, watch the TED talk above. Seriously.
I watched a TED talk today -one I've seen a few times -by Amy Cuddy all about Body Language (recommended to me by Scabs).
Sister Cuddy mentions an experiment in which subjects were asked to participate in an interview where the interviewer was basically expressionless. She says:
...they go through a very stressful job interview. It's five minutes long. They are being recorded. They're being judged also, and the judges are trained to give no nonverbal feedback, so they look like this [still face]. Imagine this is the person interviewing you. So for five minutes, nothing, and this is worse than being heckled. People hate this. It's what Marianne LaFrance calls "standing in social quicksand."
It so telling that we would rather have a negative connection than NO connection, but really? Connection is so very vital, something we crave because we NEED it -like air, food, water.
Danny and I are starting to get these glamorous, indulgent tastes of true, positive connection. It makes the relationship we had 7 years ago seem surface... not always bad, but definitely surface. It was the copper medal, and now we're touching gold.
Touching.
We spend about 30% of our time together touching gold.
35% falling away from the gold.
35% crawling back toward it.
_______________________________________________
100% of our marriage deals with connection (lack of, leaning toward, enjoying...)
I'm trying to learn how to be patient when Danny is stressed about something out of his control. My body -my smart, smart body -has retained a fancy sort of muscle memory where whenever Danny is stressed, I start protecting myself because I believe scary things inevitably follow.
This doesn't mean that Danny always acted out, but it does mean that his addict-related behaviors dominated the day, and those are very scary to me... mostly because I lose him in those moments (sometimes because I leave -figurative or literally, and sometimes because he does -figuratively, usually).
Losing Danny terrifies me. I love Danny.
Because I haven't been feeling well these days, I've spent a lot (A LOT) of time trying to reconcile my body to it's tenant: my spirit.
As I navigate the messages they're trying to send each other, as I dance the dance of moderation, listening, control, surrender...
I find that I spend
30% of my time in a healthy place
35% of my time falling out of a healthy place
35% of my time working my way BACK to a healthy place
__________________________________________________
100% of the relationship between my body and spirit deals with CONNECTION.
The relationship they have is JUST like a marriage. It's an intimate connection that takes work, dedication, loyalty, love, faith!
I find that my spirit left the presence of The Father to cleave to it's earthly body.
In my marriage, Danny and I both are trying -daily, and it is NOT always easy! -to keep God in the center of ourselves (first!) and our homes.
Inside of me, I am trying to keep my Spirit moving toward God and my Body moving toward God, hoping they will TOUCH GOLD.
And they do. They do touch gold 30% of the time.
I can imagine what it would feel like if I weren't so sick these days.
Connection is key. My body is speaking to me, and I'm learning to be patient as it works through the STUFF it's been holding for years.
As I lean into yoga poses, I feel FEAR in my body. It is terrified to simply OPEN UP because it knows, it KNOWS about pain and how pain comes after opening up.
My yoga instructor said on Monday morning, "Try to take this stretch somewhere you've never taken it. Maybe you're going to put more space between your head and chest. Maybe you'll be able to take the stretch deeper. Maybe you'll be able to feel a muscle in a way you haven't before. I know you've done this stretch a hundred times... so let's do it differently. We don't want to be the same as we were yesterday."
Everything Taura says sounds so deep when I'm on a mat in her Mom's backyard.
With that in mind, I adopted a new mantra to add to my list of Adopted Mantras:
Every Day a Difference
Today will be different from the day before. I'll try something new, take in something new, learn something new! I'll make someone else's day different. I won't go to sleep at night knowing that I'm waking up the same as I woke up the day before. My expectations for this mantra are enthusiastically low, but enthusiastic nonetheless.
So I'm charging out into the world toward DIFFERENCE.
Sometimes it means adding. Sometimes it means taking away.
Mostly it means that I keep riding those percentages waves in the right direction -RIDING, mind you, not stagnating on the wave only to be squelched by the quenching water.
It's simply finding a way to progress while being patient and accepting of where I am in life: whether I'm in a GOLD day or not.
Will I ever reach a place where everyday will be gold? Perhaps The Land of Gold lies only in those with silver hair? I don't know. I don't know the answer.
But what I do know is that it's okay that I don't know. It's okay that I'm riding some waves because the waves are all CONNECTION based, and THAT... that is one sweet wave to ride, even if you're coming down.
PS: if you want to be different than you were yesterday, watch the TED talk above. Seriously.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
The Kraken
My battles -my most hard-fought and bloodying battles -are fought with my fears. I have one gigantic fear that rules with an iron fist: The Mother Fear. She has babies that sprout from her like long tentacles. I can whack and battle the tentacles whack-a-mole style, and it doesn't bother me much. But when The Kraken itself is awakened, I know I'm in for at least 3 days of warfare.
I am so afraid.
SO SO AFRAID.
That at some point, I'm going to make a mistake. In this instance, I'm afraid of staying married (it might be a mistake!) and I'm afraid of getting divorced (it might be a mistake!).
What if I mess up?
What if I do this wrong?
What if?
Monday morning, a trigger awoke the Kraken and I spent all day wondering about my current state of limbo. I received crazy amounts of outside advice from people who usually only speak to me to find out what time of day it is.
"Make a decision and go with it. God doesn't want you in limbo. Staying AND going could both be right -just pick one and GO."
"Be compassionate for him. Try and forgive."
These voices only compounded my fear that I was IN FACT totally and royally screwing this all up.
I prayed to God for help.
Pleaded.
Screamed.
The violent sea grew more treacherous by the hour, and I knew God could calm it and me. But there was nothing in those prayers -just silence. A silent God, dangerous water, and a sea monster.
I only want to do what God wants me to do.
Please, GOD, what is the answer?
Silence. Fear. It was ripping me to shreds.
I kept very busy with work and teaching lessons and mothering and feeding everyone, and in one "quiet" moment, I opened my browser so I wouldn't have to THINK about the Kraken. As I scrolled through the names on my wall, one popped out at me.
Call her, the thought came. Did I even have her number? I did some digging, and YES, I did. I'd never spoke on the phone with her. We'd exchanged emails before, and though she wasn't well known to me, I'd always felt this woman to be kindred -no hint of Stranger Danger on my end. I texted her, asking if we could talk. We set up a time, and I went back into battle mode until that time crept around.
When I heard her voice, all sense of etiquette went out the window. Instead of niceties, I poured my yuck-ities into the phone.
Should I stay or should I go?
I'm going to make a mistake, right?
I'm so scared.
God is silent, no direction.
Is He waiting for ME to just MAKE a choice -both ARE right and God is waiting for ME to choose?
Am I doing this wrong?
AM I LIMBO-ING WRONG?!?!
Her voice was calm, something I craved amidst the tossing water around me. She spoke truth from experience, and though I can't remember her exact words, I remember her message:
You can not selectively numb. If you are numbing pain and fear, everything -including the good and God -is being numbed as well. God is not silent.
She confessed to me that she'd felt prompted to call ME a few days earlier but hadn't on account of us not "knowing" each other. "God put your name in my head," she said, "He has not forgotten you, and He isn't silent in your life." Numbing. YES. I've been numbing. I work three hours in the morning and come home to shove lunch in my mouth and take a nap before teaching lessons, and then it's homework, dinner... and inbetween times the house is always dirty, so I can always, always be cleaning.
I don't have time or space to FEEL.
The next day I shared this insight with my dearest piano student -one who is old enough to be my mother and wise enough to be my grandmother -and she said, "Alicia, you have been betrayed. Your trust has been betrayed, and you. went. numb. You have to go numb to survive."
My mind flashed back to three years ago, before I became pregnant with my now-toddler, and I was PERFECT. I was fit, my house was clean, there were freezer meals and fresh linens. I worked out every day and wore my skinny jeans and aired the house out with PERFECTION.
But really? REALLY? I was fully and completely numb. I was in total control of my own life, and I didn't NEED God because.
I got this.
Danny's life was chaotic and spinning out of control under the surface, but on the outside? He was RIGID and in control. My perfectionism lined up perfectly with his agenda.
Clean house.
Warm dinners.
Routine. Regime. Rigidity.
I was finally enough. And yet, I couldn't feel anything. I didn't care if he looked at porn. I didn't care if he didn't. I didn't write much of anything. And while the house sparkled and shined, my music became dusty and forgotten.
"It's like being in a snake hole," my friend continued, "You're perfect and doing your best. You look just right and act just right and eat just right and know that SURELY the snake that lives in the claustrophobic, dark hole will never strike at you because you're GOOD and sweet. But the snake always strikes. And you always get bit. The hole is dark. There is no light and no hope."
My heart wanted to beat out from it's rightful place and fall onto the piano in front of us.
She knows my pain.
In ALL of the outside voices, God had sent me TWO OF HIS OWN VOICES to let me know that
1) I am numbing
2) It's natural
3) It isn't His way
4) He is here for me
5) When I'm ready
6) It's okay that I'm not
7) BE GENTLE with myself
In all my years of being rejected, controlled, manipulated, and lied to, I never ONCE lost it. I never yelled or screamed or broke or threw anything... because in my broken thinking, ANGER is a mistake.
And I'm PETRIFIED when it comes to making mistakes.
I have a (growing) pile of things I want to burn -ready to scorch them out of my life. I have a poster covered in my idea of what I've lost in this addiction. I want to burn in.
I have phrases that trigger deep resentment and pain -I want to write them on a plate and SMASH them.
I want to beat a tree with a baseball bat and swear and shout and shake my fists at God and Danny and say, "THIS. HAS. TOTALLY. SUCKED."
But if I'm too busy, I will never do it and I will never feel it and I will exists in survival mode where things aren't felt or feeled and everyone swirls around me in comfortable chaos.
I shared this with Danny and he offered to get some defensive training gear from work. He said he could wear it while I beat him with my fists and feet. I know that isn't conventional, but I do believe it would be healing for me and quite possibly for him.
Most of my dear sister who I would love to have by my side during a big fat burning session live hours and/or days away, but this last week God put someone in my path who lives just minutes from me, and who offers no judgement, only love. And she approves of fires.
I gathered up my intense week and brought it to counseling Friday morning and dumped it on my counselor.
"Can you just listen for a while... while I talk?" I asked. He nodded because he's nice, and I shared it all.
The Kraken, the fear, the outside chatter, the monumental phone call, the snake hole, the tactical gear, the fire.
I cried and sputtered out, "I can't feel this. I can't be angry. HOW do I let myself LET IT OUT? Even thinking about it makes me feel awful."
He said, "When someone is physically injured as deeply as you have been emotionally injured, they are put into A COMA so they don't have to endure pain. Your numbing is natural. There is a better way, but don't shame yourself for becoming numb. It makes sense that you did."
He showed me a picture of Peter, the apostle. Peter had fallen in the sea and Christ was lifting him up.
"Peter didn't like to make any mistakes," my counselor said, "He was asked to step out of his own safety boat and into the unpredictable water. He succumbed to fear instead of faith and Christ IMMEDIATELY lifted him up. He didn't wait and let him flail around in the water to teach him a lesson, he IMMEDIATELY saved him."
I stared at the picture and saw my fear in Peter's eyes.
"And Alicia," my counselor said.
"Yeah?"
"The Kraken is imaginary. Don't forget that part of your metaphor."
Monday, September 29, 2014
The Nie Bed
Two weeks ago, my soul was dark. My life felt dark, and though there was an undercurrent of peace, the top waters of my life were chaotically tossing and heaving.
"I don't want to be married like this," I told my counselor, "I can't be married like this. I am so alone, especially when he's here."
Admitting it out loud is always painful and real. Hearing words I've only thought is harsh. Why? Because I've never been honest like this. I've never THOUGHT harsh and hard things and then SAID them.
My counselor listened to me and suggested as I work on my own healing, I channel Stephanie Nielson's journey through her change and shift in perspective.
And since I was on an honesty kick, I told him I really, really, really didn't want to read Nie anything.
Ever.
It isn't that I hate HER. My reasons really have nothing to do with her and everything to do with me.
Stephanie's plane crash happened on my birthday, less than 2 hours away from where I live. St. Johns, Arizona is about 90 minutes from Joseph City, Arizona.
I read about her story the next morning in the news. I opened her blog and binge-read with the rest of the world.
I cried a lot. 100% for Stephanie and her pain.
Days went by and I read more.
As a stay-at-home Mormon mother -7 months pregnant with a boy and chasing a 20 month old girl around -her words touched me deeply, and I found myself looking at the world wildly different.
I found myself questioning my priorities and wondering how Stephanie would handle my life. I tried to be like her, see my life as she saw her own.
But there was one difference between her life and my life.
And it wasn't the plane crash.
My husband is a sex addict.
While I was about to give birth to our second child, I was also enduring daily porn usage by my husband. My son was born and I found myself reading less and less Nie.
My tears became 70% for Stephanie and 30% for me because her blog had glossy descriptions of her husband's unfailing ability to SEE her.
The ratios gradually flipped, and I quit reading Nie because I didn't want to hurt so much anymore.
When my counselor suggested I turn to her and study her story and life, I felt an old twinge of sadness and I told him I couldn't. I wouldn't.
But his suggestion never left my mind. I put my toes in the Nie water by asking a few friends if they'd read her book. They had. They liked it. They weren't a puddle of tears.
I sat on the idea for a few days, and then when I fell sick over the weekend, I jumped into the Nie water.
One-click buy and 60 seconds later, I was curled up with my iPad reading, "Heaven is Here."
I cried a lot, and I cried hard. I read the book in two days, and it took me over a week to recover.
I hated my counselor for suggesting it. I hated that my pain wasn't visible. I hated that Stephanie's husband was patient. I hated that Stephanie had overwhelming passion for her husband.
I found myself jealously craving her hospital bed and the opportunity to just REST while my family took my kids because I CAN'T MOTHER LIKE MY CHILDREN NEED ME TO.
In the 6 years since my son was born and I'd quit reading Nie, I'd gone from a woman who devoted herself to marriage and home to a mother who worked part-time to save money up in case she had to support herself.
I'm separated from my husband.
He lives in the camp trailer I've affectionately named Dog House and I live in the manufactured home next to him. Our kids have cried hard tears of fear, and my house isn't clean.
Like, ever.
You can't see my scars, but they are there. I see them everyday, even if no one else does.
In the week following the reading of Nie, I cried a lot and couldn't WAIT to get my words on my counselor.
WHY?
WHY had he asked me to read about Stephanie?!
What could the wife of a SEX ADDICT possibly gain from reading about a woman with a devoted husband? Do I have the safety of knowing my husband would stay by my side if I were burned? I don't. I really don't. What I DO have is years upon years of struggling with image to keep up with what kept my husband's interest... a losing battle, and devastating losses have been sustained there.
Christian calls her darling.
He loves her for HER, not what she has to offer.
I cried so hard for myself when I read that book, and the trauma felt was harrowing.
Six days later, I watched a movie about a man and a woman that belonged together but could never QUITE make the connection. There was always a boyfriend in the way or a pregnant girlfriend or an alcohol problem. When they finally come together 15 years after they SHOULD have, she is hit by a bus and dies.
DIES.
The movie ended with thoughts about how things could have gone differently if the man had simply made different choices early on, and as the credits rolled at midnight, I found myself just fuming.
I was shaking and angry.
Fifteen years is too long.
So much is being missed.
Stephanie and Christian.
Building lives and homes together...
More kids.
Memories we never made and can't get back.
The FUTURE felt in those first kisses.
Pissed away, pissed away, pissed away.
Before I knew it, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling my hair back with shaking hands. I pulled a sweater on and marched myself out to The Dog House.
I woke my husband up and for the first time EVER, I took the honesty I'd tapped into with my counselor and I let it shake all over my husband.
Did I yell?
No, but I didn't feel like I needed to.
Did I cry?
Some.
Did I swear?
Once.
Did I shame?
No.
I told him how mad I was... how OF ALL HE HAD MISSED IN OUR MARRIAGE,
I
ME
ALICIA
was his biggest loss.
I could see my own worth in Stephanie and the fictional woman who'd been hit by a bus.
AS I AM, I HAVE SO MUCH TO OFFER. Just by being, I brought a WORLD of AWESOME to my marriage and relationship.
I deserved better.
I unleashed my own self-hate for not standing up for myself sooner, for coddling what I thought was just a little (and natural) porn habit.
I might not have passion for my husband right now, but I have stumbled upon something more important: passion for myself.
Stephanie's painful story taught me how a woman healing from wounds should be treated. She taught me that it's okay to be irrational and say things you wouldn't normally say.
It became clear to me that my husband could and should be patient with me as I heal, and if he isn't... he needs to go away.
I can't clean my house and teach my toddler Chinese while the homemade gluten free noodles boil on low.
I can make sure we pray. I can make sure we're honest with each other about how we're doing and what we're feeling. I can hold my daughter while she tells me about her fears of Daddy not coming back home.
I can listen to my son tell me about the latest Power Rangers episode he watched while I sat through my weekly s-anon meeting online.
In short, I can give myself permission to see the hospital bed I'm in, even if others can't or don't or won't.
What's more: I can begin to see past hurtful words said by others to their own invisible hospital beds.
And like Christian was patient with his healing wife, so to can I work to be patient with those healing around me.
I can stand up for myself as I heal, and love will begin to seep through the cracks made by fear.
"I don't want to be married like this," I told my counselor, "I can't be married like this. I am so alone, especially when he's here."
Admitting it out loud is always painful and real. Hearing words I've only thought is harsh. Why? Because I've never been honest like this. I've never THOUGHT harsh and hard things and then SAID them.
My counselor listened to me and suggested as I work on my own healing, I channel Stephanie Nielson's journey through her change and shift in perspective.
And since I was on an honesty kick, I told him I really, really, really didn't want to read Nie anything.
Ever.
It isn't that I hate HER. My reasons really have nothing to do with her and everything to do with me.
Stephanie's plane crash happened on my birthday, less than 2 hours away from where I live. St. Johns, Arizona is about 90 minutes from Joseph City, Arizona.
I read about her story the next morning in the news. I opened her blog and binge-read with the rest of the world.
I cried a lot. 100% for Stephanie and her pain.
Days went by and I read more.
As a stay-at-home Mormon mother -7 months pregnant with a boy and chasing a 20 month old girl around -her words touched me deeply, and I found myself looking at the world wildly different.
I found myself questioning my priorities and wondering how Stephanie would handle my life. I tried to be like her, see my life as she saw her own.
But there was one difference between her life and my life.
And it wasn't the plane crash.
My husband is a sex addict.
While I was about to give birth to our second child, I was also enduring daily porn usage by my husband. My son was born and I found myself reading less and less Nie.
My tears became 70% for Stephanie and 30% for me because her blog had glossy descriptions of her husband's unfailing ability to SEE her.
The ratios gradually flipped, and I quit reading Nie because I didn't want to hurt so much anymore.
When my counselor suggested I turn to her and study her story and life, I felt an old twinge of sadness and I told him I couldn't. I wouldn't.
But his suggestion never left my mind. I put my toes in the Nie water by asking a few friends if they'd read her book. They had. They liked it. They weren't a puddle of tears.
I sat on the idea for a few days, and then when I fell sick over the weekend, I jumped into the Nie water.
One-click buy and 60 seconds later, I was curled up with my iPad reading, "Heaven is Here."
I cried a lot, and I cried hard. I read the book in two days, and it took me over a week to recover.
I hated my counselor for suggesting it. I hated that my pain wasn't visible. I hated that Stephanie's husband was patient. I hated that Stephanie had overwhelming passion for her husband.
I found myself jealously craving her hospital bed and the opportunity to just REST while my family took my kids because I CAN'T MOTHER LIKE MY CHILDREN NEED ME TO.
In the 6 years since my son was born and I'd quit reading Nie, I'd gone from a woman who devoted herself to marriage and home to a mother who worked part-time to save money up in case she had to support herself.
I'm separated from my husband.
He lives in the camp trailer I've affectionately named Dog House and I live in the manufactured home next to him. Our kids have cried hard tears of fear, and my house isn't clean.
Like, ever.
You can't see my scars, but they are there. I see them everyday, even if no one else does.
In the week following the reading of Nie, I cried a lot and couldn't WAIT to get my words on my counselor.
WHY?
WHY had he asked me to read about Stephanie?!
What could the wife of a SEX ADDICT possibly gain from reading about a woman with a devoted husband? Do I have the safety of knowing my husband would stay by my side if I were burned? I don't. I really don't. What I DO have is years upon years of struggling with image to keep up with what kept my husband's interest... a losing battle, and devastating losses have been sustained there.
Christian calls her darling.
He loves her for HER, not what she has to offer.
I cried so hard for myself when I read that book, and the trauma felt was harrowing.
Six days later, I watched a movie about a man and a woman that belonged together but could never QUITE make the connection. There was always a boyfriend in the way or a pregnant girlfriend or an alcohol problem. When they finally come together 15 years after they SHOULD have, she is hit by a bus and dies.
DIES.
The movie ended with thoughts about how things could have gone differently if the man had simply made different choices early on, and as the credits rolled at midnight, I found myself just fuming.
I was shaking and angry.
Fifteen years is too long.
So much is being missed.
Stephanie and Christian.
Building lives and homes together...
More kids.
Memories we never made and can't get back.
The FUTURE felt in those first kisses.
Pissed away, pissed away, pissed away.
Before I knew it, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling my hair back with shaking hands. I pulled a sweater on and marched myself out to The Dog House.
I woke my husband up and for the first time EVER, I took the honesty I'd tapped into with my counselor and I let it shake all over my husband.
Did I yell?
No, but I didn't feel like I needed to.
Did I cry?
Some.
Did I swear?
Once.
Did I shame?
No.
I told him how mad I was... how OF ALL HE HAD MISSED IN OUR MARRIAGE,
I
ME
ALICIA
was his biggest loss.
I could see my own worth in Stephanie and the fictional woman who'd been hit by a bus.
AS I AM, I HAVE SO MUCH TO OFFER. Just by being, I brought a WORLD of AWESOME to my marriage and relationship.
I deserved better.
I unleashed my own self-hate for not standing up for myself sooner, for coddling what I thought was just a little (and natural) porn habit.
I might not have passion for my husband right now, but I have stumbled upon something more important: passion for myself.
Stephanie's painful story taught me how a woman healing from wounds should be treated. She taught me that it's okay to be irrational and say things you wouldn't normally say.
It became clear to me that my husband could and should be patient with me as I heal, and if he isn't... he needs to go away.
I can't clean my house and teach my toddler Chinese while the homemade gluten free noodles boil on low.
I can make sure we pray. I can make sure we're honest with each other about how we're doing and what we're feeling. I can hold my daughter while she tells me about her fears of Daddy not coming back home.
I can listen to my son tell me about the latest Power Rangers episode he watched while I sat through my weekly s-anon meeting online.
In short, I can give myself permission to see the hospital bed I'm in, even if others can't or don't or won't.
What's more: I can begin to see past hurtful words said by others to their own invisible hospital beds.
And like Christian was patient with his healing wife, so to can I work to be patient with those healing around me.
I can stand up for myself as I heal, and love will begin to seep through the cracks made by fear.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Not in my Hands
Years ago, I gave my husband to God -I'd kept him for years, audacious enough to somehow believe that he belonged to me.
It's all very 50's doo-wop and romantic-sounding... with *just a hint* of maniac control.
Now that I've done my best to dust that kind of mentality on my mom jeans, I still find myself running into situations that are
FULLY
out of my hands.
It's one thing when porn isn't looked at. Sobriety on the part of the addict somehow mandates my being MORE okay, right? I mean, not 100% ship-shape, but... better?
I somehow feel like asking for SOBRIETY AND RECOVERY is too much. It makes me high strung and mean and impatient... unkind, lacking compassion.
But the truth is: Danny never was in my hands or my power or control. He acted as he would.
And when I finally, finally, FINALLY accepted that and let go completely... I found that trust is something I had to let go of as well.
He may be sober, but there is no trust. Will there ever be?
Who can know?
It's all very 50's doo-wop and romantic-sounding... with *just a hint* of maniac control.
Now that I've done my best to dust that kind of mentality on my mom jeans, I still find myself running into situations that are
FULLY
out of my hands.
It's one thing when porn isn't looked at. Sobriety on the part of the addict somehow mandates my being MORE okay, right? I mean, not 100% ship-shape, but... better?
I somehow feel like asking for SOBRIETY AND RECOVERY is too much. It makes me high strung and mean and impatient... unkind, lacking compassion.
But the truth is: Danny never was in my hands or my power or control. He acted as he would.
And when I finally, finally, FINALLY accepted that and let go completely... I found that trust is something I had to let go of as well.
He may be sober, but there is no trust. Will there ever be?
Who can know?
Sunday, May 25, 2014
The Old Adage
"It's not about the porn."
I can't even keep track of how many times I've said that. It's become a sort of blanket statement -it protects me. It protects me from people who wonder why porn bothers me so much. I adopted it and even came to believe it because I felt so much shame when anyone would minimize porn.
I felt broken and weak because porn bothered me so much. Surely, something so trivial shouldn't cause such a WAVE of PAIN in a someone who dares to think of herself as a true, independent, smart and strong WOMAN.
It's just porn.
Their words echoed in my head.
"It's just porn.
At least he's not actually cheating.
It could be so much worse."
And then there's the...
"If it were just porn, I could handle it.
There's so much more going on here.
He doesn't connect at all.
He doesn't see me.
He doesn't even try."
The bigger picture message sent by society is the same:
"Porn is normal.
Porn is common.
Everyone does it.
Porn is no big deal."
And I believed it all. I knew I still wasn't okay, but I realized we had bigger problems than porn, and that's when I began adding, "It isn't even the porn" to the beginning of my story.
"It's the lies, the behaviors, the secrecy, the shame, the double life..."
AND THEN I was okay. Then I felt validated in my pain, I felt like I finally had ENOUGH EVIDENCE or something... accepting that porn hurt me just wasn't okay because porn is such a little bug in a sea of awful things that can plague a marriage.
Right?
Thursday night as we drove home from our grocery shopping, Danny and I had a lot to talk about including a big trigger I'd had earlier in the evening.
So I began, "It isn't even about the porn..."
And he said something that struck me to my very center... the kind of feeling I get when I hear TRUTH.
"Stop saying that. It IS. It IS about the porn."
I didn't know what to say. Or how to reply. Or what he meant. Was he being mean? or defensive? or was he trying to explain something...?
I asked him what he meant, and he spoke with such fire... between his fire and the fire lit in cavity of my chest, I didn't really know what to say or do.
The truth struck me. And it struck me hard.
"Alicia, saying it isn't about porn is minimizing. Porn is the reason for ALL of this... [meaning the issues in our lives and marriage]. Porn is where it all stems from: the disconnect, the addiction, the double-life... and I don't like hearing it isn't about the porn because it makes porn seem like no big deal. And it IS. It IS about the porn. When it comes right down to it, it IS about the porn."
And the truth is:
It IS.
This whole thing IS ABOUT PORN.
So often porn is minimized by others around me, and instead of standing up and fighting for what I believe, I've given into fear of being viewed as weak in others' eyes and minimized along with them, thereby becoming part of the problem.
Is porn THE problem? No. Not alone it isn't.
But porn is a DRUG and one of the main gateway drugs into sex addiction. It was THE GATEWAY drug for Danny, and it is the main problem in what's wrong with our marriage.
My marriage has been RIFE with lies, yes. Shame, secrets, double living, YES.
There's also been disconnect, manipulation, controlling, rationalization! YES!
Danny has spent a decade with me and has never fully SEEN me or APPRECIATED me.
WHY?
Because his brained was wired to look at the world from the point of view of, "What does this person or situation have to offer me?" instead of "What do I have to offer this person or situation?"
WHY?
Because he looked at porn and became addicted. After seeing it once, ONCE, he began implementing patterns of thought and behaviors that would haunt him and his future family.
And I speak from the pain and depths of the soul of a woman robbed...
And he has cheated on me.
And I have spent an entire marriage unseen and in disconnect.
I vow to bravely live as my own husband dares to... acknowledging porn as the giant it is, giving it the credit is deserves, and standing up as a woman of God to speak my truth, "Porn isn't small. Porn kills. It kills love, YES. But porn kills souls, dreams, and youth."
I make this promise now to myself, to you, and to Danny:
I'll stop saying it.
I'll stop saying, "It isn't about the porn."
Because you're right, Danny. It IS. For me, for us... it most definitely is about the porn.
I have been hurt by so many I love that have minimized pornography. In an attempt to protect myself, I've adopted the attitude that porn isn't even on the radar of what affects me anymore.
And THAT.
That is something to mourn.
I should be posting statistics. I should be posting scientific findings and pie charts and prophetic quotes. But I'm not. Because I don't have to prove my pain anymore. I don't have to explain it or make you okay with it.
All I have right now is the experience on my back, and that Experience says, "Porn is worse than hard drugs, and you live with someone who battles an addiction to it. And you, great girl of God, are on Refiner's Fire. This fire will burn fear and shame from your core and replace it with Christ: His Strength, His Love, His Confidence in God. Walk on, and do not faint."
I can not live in fear of what others think -I can not act on that fear, live my life from that place!
I know that the Lord has never minimized my pain -the pain that has stemmed from a rottenly fertile seed planted in my husband's brain nearly 20 years before we ever met.
This whole thing? This pain I'm going through? It's about porn.
The rest is symptomatic.
I can't even keep track of how many times I've said that. It's become a sort of blanket statement -it protects me. It protects me from people who wonder why porn bothers me so much. I adopted it and even came to believe it because I felt so much shame when anyone would minimize porn.
I felt broken and weak because porn bothered me so much. Surely, something so trivial shouldn't cause such a WAVE of PAIN in a someone who dares to think of herself as a true, independent, smart and strong WOMAN.
It's just porn.
Their words echoed in my head.
"It's just porn.
At least he's not actually cheating.
It could be so much worse."
And then there's the...
"If it were just porn, I could handle it.
There's so much more going on here.
He doesn't connect at all.
He doesn't see me.
He doesn't even try."
The bigger picture message sent by society is the same:
"Porn is normal.
Porn is common.
Everyone does it.
Porn is no big deal."
And I believed it all. I knew I still wasn't okay, but I realized we had bigger problems than porn, and that's when I began adding, "It isn't even the porn" to the beginning of my story.
"It's the lies, the behaviors, the secrecy, the shame, the double life..."
AND THEN I was okay. Then I felt validated in my pain, I felt like I finally had ENOUGH EVIDENCE or something... accepting that porn hurt me just wasn't okay because porn is such a little bug in a sea of awful things that can plague a marriage.
Right?
Thursday night as we drove home from our grocery shopping, Danny and I had a lot to talk about including a big trigger I'd had earlier in the evening.
So I began, "It isn't even about the porn..."
And he said something that struck me to my very center... the kind of feeling I get when I hear TRUTH.
"Stop saying that. It IS. It IS about the porn."
I didn't know what to say. Or how to reply. Or what he meant. Was he being mean? or defensive? or was he trying to explain something...?
I asked him what he meant, and he spoke with such fire... between his fire and the fire lit in cavity of my chest, I didn't really know what to say or do.
The truth struck me. And it struck me hard.
"Alicia, saying it isn't about porn is minimizing. Porn is the reason for ALL of this... [meaning the issues in our lives and marriage]. Porn is where it all stems from: the disconnect, the addiction, the double-life... and I don't like hearing it isn't about the porn because it makes porn seem like no big deal. And it IS. It IS about the porn. When it comes right down to it, it IS about the porn."
And the truth is:
It IS.
This whole thing IS ABOUT PORN.
So often porn is minimized by others around me, and instead of standing up and fighting for what I believe, I've given into fear of being viewed as weak in others' eyes and minimized along with them, thereby becoming part of the problem.
Is porn THE problem? No. Not alone it isn't.
But porn is a DRUG and one of the main gateway drugs into sex addiction. It was THE GATEWAY drug for Danny, and it is the main problem in what's wrong with our marriage.
My marriage has been RIFE with lies, yes. Shame, secrets, double living, YES.
There's also been disconnect, manipulation, controlling, rationalization! YES!
Danny has spent a decade with me and has never fully SEEN me or APPRECIATED me.
WHY?
Because his brained was wired to look at the world from the point of view of, "What does this person or situation have to offer me?" instead of "What do I have to offer this person or situation?"
WHY?
Because he looked at porn and became addicted. After seeing it once, ONCE, he began implementing patterns of thought and behaviors that would haunt him and his future family.
And I speak from the pain and depths of the soul of a woman robbed...
IT IS ABOUT THE PORN.
And he has cheated on me.
And I have spent an entire marriage unseen and in disconnect.
I vow to bravely live as my own husband dares to... acknowledging porn as the giant it is, giving it the credit is deserves, and standing up as a woman of God to speak my truth, "Porn isn't small. Porn kills. It kills love, YES. But porn kills souls, dreams, and youth."
I make this promise now to myself, to you, and to Danny:
I'll stop saying it.
I'll stop saying, "It isn't about the porn."
Because you're right, Danny. It IS. For me, for us... it most definitely is about the porn.
I have been hurt by so many I love that have minimized pornography. In an attempt to protect myself, I've adopted the attitude that porn isn't even on the radar of what affects me anymore.
And THAT.
That is something to mourn.
I should be posting statistics. I should be posting scientific findings and pie charts and prophetic quotes. But I'm not. Because I don't have to prove my pain anymore. I don't have to explain it or make you okay with it.
All I have right now is the experience on my back, and that Experience says, "Porn is worse than hard drugs, and you live with someone who battles an addiction to it. And you, great girl of God, are on Refiner's Fire. This fire will burn fear and shame from your core and replace it with Christ: His Strength, His Love, His Confidence in God. Walk on, and do not faint."
I can not live in fear of what others think -I can not act on that fear, live my life from that place!
I know that the Lord has never minimized my pain -the pain that has stemmed from a rottenly fertile seed planted in my husband's brain nearly 20 years before we ever met.
This whole thing? This pain I'm going through? It's about porn.
The rest is symptomatic.
Friday, May 16, 2014
The End of Numb
I remember the first time I found out about porn. I caught him.
A newlywed with all her bloom and youth and tight skin pulled over energy and twitterpation... I turned into a different creature. To say I was devastated would be a gross minimization.
Oh, how I FELT that discovery, how I lived it over and over again in my mind -the worst rerun in the history of TV Land.
I felt sure I would never go through it again. I didn't know that porn was something that was less like a "whoopsie daisy" and more like the worst kind of blood-deep poison.
But it did happen again.
"And again and again and again!" to quote my favorite Uncle Willy (The Philadelphia Story).
I tried reasoning, shaming, bargaining, saving, preventing, more shaming... I OVER"loved" him. Nothing worked.
I poured my entire self into the poison.
My life and obsession, my sole hobby... it was Danny. More than anything, I wanted my marriage covenants to remain intact. I wanted my family together forever.
I loved Danny. I loved our marriage.
I understood his weakness, and gosh darn it ALL if I wasn't THE MOST PATIENT wife in the history of the universe.
Do you know how long you can last trying to compete with porn? Oh, I think the answer is different for everyone. But for me, personally, it lasted about 6 1/2 years. At that point, I began doing recovery work. I read the books, I found support. I gained education.
I knew I was getting better because the devastation I felt all those years ago was beginning to dissipate.
He would come to me with disclosures (or I would fine evidence), and I shrugged.
Eh.
Meh.
Blah.
Whatever.
Then I would look at myself in the mirror and work on the only thing I had control over: ME.
I continued living with an addict.
I choose my marriage. I choose my marriage to an addict. But the only way I could survive it was numbness.
It felt like I was sitting on a couch, watching Groundhog Day over and over again... yelling at the screen, pulling my hair, but in the end... I was utterly powerless over Danny's actions.
The numbness made it go down easier.
Only.
There were certains in my house who weren't numb. In fact, they were the OPPOSITE of numb. They're impressionable, sensitive, and internalizing everything.
I watched tears stream down my daughter's face after an outburst from Dad.
"Because I did something bad," she sobbed.
I started realizing that for all the patience I had, for all the CHOOSING MY MARRIAGE I had done... the return, the truth... was ugly. Facing seemed to feel a lot like heartbreak -something I had shielded myself against.
But the Lord has a way of providing us with what we need, even if we don't want it.
He provided me with truth: hard evidence that no matter how you sliced it:
Danny was not choosing our marriage.
Danny was not choosing me.
There was no real recovery.
I knew -though it killed me -that I couldn't stay. I wouldn't stay. Staying in a marriage where I was cleaving unto God and my husband (and fear, while we're at it) was pointless.
I married for ETERNITY. Not time. A time marriage made no real sense to me. I was hell-bent on eternity.
But I could not force it on any other person.
And so the time came when that person had to go away because my marriage -though it began in the Temple -was something I'd feared since I was a child.
It was pointless.
To maintain my peace as a woman of God and a mother of three beautiful children (yea, THE MOST beautiful children), I had to sever ties. I had to leave my marriage.
God was my guide.
It turns out that I can't live numb... primarily because "living" and "numb" can't actually coexist.
I'm not powerless anymore. I'm not watching scenes go down at shrugging anymore.
I just can't!
I just can't! SO MUCH.
Thinking of The Numb Place makes me feel so sad. Reminders of The Numb Place make me feel sorrow.
I want to LIVE. I want joy and pain and sorrow and happiness.
I want feelings to come into my body and I want to EMOTE them out: write them, scream them, sing them, talk them!
I want a marriage where my husband CHOOSES ME and LOVES ME and SEES ME AS AN EQUAL and REMAINS WITH ME INTO THE ETERNITIES.
I seal that desire with the death of my marriage.
I seal that desire with baptism by fire.
I seal that desire with love... my failing love of God and His unfailing love for me.
The future is alive, and in His hands.
(and as it turns out, I'm not the patient person I thought I was all these years. In fact, I have no patience at all. For anything. Hello, Character Weakness.)
A newlywed with all her bloom and youth and tight skin pulled over energy and twitterpation... I turned into a different creature. To say I was devastated would be a gross minimization.
Oh, how I FELT that discovery, how I lived it over and over again in my mind -the worst rerun in the history of TV Land.
I felt sure I would never go through it again. I didn't know that porn was something that was less like a "whoopsie daisy" and more like the worst kind of blood-deep poison.
But it did happen again.
"And again and again and again!" to quote my favorite Uncle Willy (The Philadelphia Story).
I tried reasoning, shaming, bargaining, saving, preventing, more shaming... I OVER"loved" him. Nothing worked.
I poured my entire self into the poison.
My life and obsession, my sole hobby... it was Danny. More than anything, I wanted my marriage covenants to remain intact. I wanted my family together forever.
I loved Danny. I loved our marriage.
I understood his weakness, and gosh darn it ALL if I wasn't THE MOST PATIENT wife in the history of the universe.
Do you know how long you can last trying to compete with porn? Oh, I think the answer is different for everyone. But for me, personally, it lasted about 6 1/2 years. At that point, I began doing recovery work. I read the books, I found support. I gained education.
I knew I was getting better because the devastation I felt all those years ago was beginning to dissipate.
He would come to me with disclosures (or I would fine evidence), and I shrugged.
Eh.
Meh.
Blah.
Whatever.
Then I would look at myself in the mirror and work on the only thing I had control over: ME.
I continued living with an addict.
I choose my marriage. I choose my marriage to an addict. But the only way I could survive it was numbness.
It felt like I was sitting on a couch, watching Groundhog Day over and over again... yelling at the screen, pulling my hair, but in the end... I was utterly powerless over Danny's actions.
The numbness made it go down easier.
Only.
There were certains in my house who weren't numb. In fact, they were the OPPOSITE of numb. They're impressionable, sensitive, and internalizing everything.
I watched tears stream down my daughter's face after an outburst from Dad.
"Because I did something bad," she sobbed.
I started realizing that for all the patience I had, for all the CHOOSING MY MARRIAGE I had done... the return, the truth... was ugly. Facing seemed to feel a lot like heartbreak -something I had shielded myself against.
But the Lord has a way of providing us with what we need, even if we don't want it.
He provided me with truth: hard evidence that no matter how you sliced it:
Danny was not choosing our marriage.
Danny was not choosing me.
There was no real recovery.
I knew -though it killed me -that I couldn't stay. I wouldn't stay. Staying in a marriage where I was cleaving unto God and my husband (and fear, while we're at it) was pointless.
I married for ETERNITY. Not time. A time marriage made no real sense to me. I was hell-bent on eternity.
But I could not force it on any other person.
And so the time came when that person had to go away because my marriage -though it began in the Temple -was something I'd feared since I was a child.
It was pointless.
To maintain my peace as a woman of God and a mother of three beautiful children (yea, THE MOST beautiful children), I had to sever ties. I had to leave my marriage.
God was my guide.
It turns out that I can't live numb... primarily because "living" and "numb" can't actually coexist.
I'm not powerless anymore. I'm not watching scenes go down at shrugging anymore.
I just can't!
I just can't! SO MUCH.
Thinking of The Numb Place makes me feel so sad. Reminders of The Numb Place make me feel sorrow.
I want to LIVE. I want joy and pain and sorrow and happiness.
I want feelings to come into my body and I want to EMOTE them out: write them, scream them, sing them, talk them!
I want a marriage where my husband CHOOSES ME and LOVES ME and SEES ME AS AN EQUAL and REMAINS WITH ME INTO THE ETERNITIES.
I seal that desire with the death of my marriage.
I seal that desire with baptism by fire.
I seal that desire with love... my failing love of God and His unfailing love for me.
The future is alive, and in His hands.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
First in Five
My husband asked me out today.
It seems like such a given, right? Husbands asking wives out... except that in July I told my husband I wouldn't go on dates with him (unless he wanted to attend the Temple together). It's a boundary that helped me feel safe. I didn't want my marriage, so why invest?
As I sat in the aftermath of The Great Bucket of Water to the Face, I found myself ring shopping. I didn't understand it, but I didn't fight it either.
Was it because I finally saw reality and was okay with moving forward with it?
Was it because I work primarily with men and find myself missing the protection a ring has to offer?
Was it because I'm a girl and girls like shopping for shiny things?
I don't know. I just felt okay looking for rings, so I did.
This year -for the first time ever -I read Anne of Green Gables. As I read it, I was a little freaked out because I related SO much to Anne. Her talking, her INCESSANT talking, her imagination, the way she romanticized everything right down to her reflection. Reading her thoughts was like frolicking through my Little Girl brain. Of all the Hollywood relationships, her love and then marriage to Gilbert Blythe is one of my favorites. Their time together is fraught with misunderstanding, fights, caring, compassion, thoughtfulness, encouragement, competition, and every other REAL emotion human connection has to offer. Gilbert believes in Anne and encourages her to pursue her dreams and develop her gifts. Anne feels the same way about him. As they begin their life together, Anne sports a delicate gold ring with a pearl on top. Why? Because she had envisioned diamonds to be the most romantic gem in the world... right up until she saw one. She was so disappointed that she never got over it. It wasn't what she thought it was going to be. She insisted on a pearl ring.
As I thumbed through images of rose gold rings with champagne diamonds, I somehow stumbled into an etsy shop full of delicate rings. One stood out, fairly screaming at me... delicate, gold, single pearl on top.
And that's what I want.
My current wedding ring is still broken, and I have no plans to put it back on. ever.
I left home Saturday morning -the "morning after" -and came home Sunday noon-time. I spent my Saturday morning on a massage table and my afternoon rifling through antique shops.
My drive to the city is usually riddled with anxiety and white knuckles, but as I drove over icy roads and through holiday traffic, I was unfazed. I'm terrified of car accidents, but on Saturday I thought about what a welcome relief one would be. It would stop time. No one checked into a hospital for a car accident ever keeps track of time. Life slows down, people feed you, your children are taken care of. And you don't have to do anything but focus on letting your body heal.
As the massage therapist worked her steady hands into my flesh that morning, her soothing voice became almost bossy, "You have no choice but to take care of yourself physically. The stress... the stress has done so much damage. Can you feel me working heavy burdens out of your body?"
Answer: Yes. The most wonderful "ouch" ever.
As the sun went down behind the San Francisco Peaks in the city, I called the owners at my favorite Bed and Breakfast and asked if they might have -by some wild chance -the room under the stairs open.
The Harry Potter Room, they like to call it, though it's actually the house's old pantry room.
I could feel in my gut I needed to get stay away from home for the night, but I wanted a small room... a quiet room in an actual house where there was limitless hot water and a thick robe and complimentary chocolate milk.
Three years before when I'd hit my own rock bottom, I holed up in a tiny room at a Bed and Breakfast and wrote in a journal and cried and prayed. This trip was to be no different.
Because tender mercies are very REAL, The Harry Potter room was available. I poured myself into the red sheets and wrote.
The night after The Bucket of Water in my Face, I dreamed of a woman... she was standing on a barren street corner in a dirty wedding dress. She was a shell of a woman who once was. She was getting ready to be married again, but she had no feeling left, no love, no purpose. I tried to tell her that she was strong. In reply, she walked me down a hallway filled with memories of her first marriage. There was a table adorned with her tastes: colors, flavors, styles. There was a wedding cake. There were snap shots... each one featuring a beautiful young bride with bright gleaming eyes.
She didn't feel the same about them anymore... her memory of her own past had been altered.
As I sat in bed with my chocolate milk by my side, I felt like the girl from my dreams. She was a sort of modern Miss Havisham in her own right.
But my pen gives me power of expression, and I used that power to take my memories back. I went through each memory that had been taken from me and I took it back. I wrote myself a list of advice... a general guide for what I should have done.
Don't chase.
Ask more question about this and that.
Insist on better medical care.
You are not a fix.
I went into detail in each paragraph of advice, telling my old self how to do, what to do.
Don't ditch class.
Buy him gifts that are not sexual.
Don't have sex on your honeymoon.
Go on organized dates with no sexual agenda.
As the words poured out of me, I was angry. It was unfiltered, righteous indignation. The guilt that normally prevents me from honest anger was not allowed in the Harry Potter room.
At midnight I set my pen down, locked my door with the original skeleton key and fell asleep to the sound of downtown city living: trains, sirens, bass thumping in the distance...
The next morning, I woke up on my own before 6 am. I stepped into the shower and set the water as hot as I can stand it (boil a lobster has always been my default shower setting). I sat on the shower floor and let the hot water and steam cleanse me. Water, both literal and living, has been on the forefront of my recovery journey. After I'd soaked and steamed and cleansed for long enough, I wrapped myself in a lovely thick robe and climbed back into bed.
I put the pen to paper and once again wrote my truth. My angry words from the night before were a few pages and a hot shower behind me...and I wrote an unexpected invitation.
"I finally truly see reality, and as I face it with wild desire to escape, I welcome you into it. My bare memory walls need to be filled... I am going to be hard to live with for awhile as I exert my voice and give reign to my inner core... and with that, I issue an invitation... you come too."
And so it was with nervousness in his voice that he called and asked me on a date.
Lots of couples can go for five months without a date. It seems like no big thing, just another Wednesday night, right?
But for us -tonight -we are starting over.
It's a delicate pearl ring and Robert Frost kinda thing.
It seems like such a given, right? Husbands asking wives out... except that in July I told my husband I wouldn't go on dates with him (unless he wanted to attend the Temple together). It's a boundary that helped me feel safe. I didn't want my marriage, so why invest?
As I sat in the aftermath of The Great Bucket of Water to the Face, I found myself ring shopping. I didn't understand it, but I didn't fight it either.
Was it because I finally saw reality and was okay with moving forward with it?
Was it because I work primarily with men and find myself missing the protection a ring has to offer?
Was it because I'm a girl and girls like shopping for shiny things?
I don't know. I just felt okay looking for rings, so I did.
This year -for the first time ever -I read Anne of Green Gables. As I read it, I was a little freaked out because I related SO much to Anne. Her talking, her INCESSANT talking, her imagination, the way she romanticized everything right down to her reflection. Reading her thoughts was like frolicking through my Little Girl brain. Of all the Hollywood relationships, her love and then marriage to Gilbert Blythe is one of my favorites. Their time together is fraught with misunderstanding, fights, caring, compassion, thoughtfulness, encouragement, competition, and every other REAL emotion human connection has to offer. Gilbert believes in Anne and encourages her to pursue her dreams and develop her gifts. Anne feels the same way about him. As they begin their life together, Anne sports a delicate gold ring with a pearl on top. Why? Because she had envisioned diamonds to be the most romantic gem in the world... right up until she saw one. She was so disappointed that she never got over it. It wasn't what she thought it was going to be. She insisted on a pearl ring.
As I thumbed through images of rose gold rings with champagne diamonds, I somehow stumbled into an etsy shop full of delicate rings. One stood out, fairly screaming at me... delicate, gold, single pearl on top.
And that's what I want.
My current wedding ring is still broken, and I have no plans to put it back on. ever.
I left home Saturday morning -the "morning after" -and came home Sunday noon-time. I spent my Saturday morning on a massage table and my afternoon rifling through antique shops.
My drive to the city is usually riddled with anxiety and white knuckles, but as I drove over icy roads and through holiday traffic, I was unfazed. I'm terrified of car accidents, but on Saturday I thought about what a welcome relief one would be. It would stop time. No one checked into a hospital for a car accident ever keeps track of time. Life slows down, people feed you, your children are taken care of. And you don't have to do anything but focus on letting your body heal.
As the massage therapist worked her steady hands into my flesh that morning, her soothing voice became almost bossy, "You have no choice but to take care of yourself physically. The stress... the stress has done so much damage. Can you feel me working heavy burdens out of your body?"
Answer: Yes. The most wonderful "ouch" ever.
As the sun went down behind the San Francisco Peaks in the city, I called the owners at my favorite Bed and Breakfast and asked if they might have -by some wild chance -the room under the stairs open.
The Harry Potter Room, they like to call it, though it's actually the house's old pantry room.
I could feel in my gut I needed to get stay away from home for the night, but I wanted a small room... a quiet room in an actual house where there was limitless hot water and a thick robe and complimentary chocolate milk.
Three years before when I'd hit my own rock bottom, I holed up in a tiny room at a Bed and Breakfast and wrote in a journal and cried and prayed. This trip was to be no different.
Because tender mercies are very REAL, The Harry Potter room was available. I poured myself into the red sheets and wrote.
The night after The Bucket of Water in my Face, I dreamed of a woman... she was standing on a barren street corner in a dirty wedding dress. She was a shell of a woman who once was. She was getting ready to be married again, but she had no feeling left, no love, no purpose. I tried to tell her that she was strong. In reply, she walked me down a hallway filled with memories of her first marriage. There was a table adorned with her tastes: colors, flavors, styles. There was a wedding cake. There were snap shots... each one featuring a beautiful young bride with bright gleaming eyes.
She didn't feel the same about them anymore... her memory of her own past had been altered.
As I sat in bed with my chocolate milk by my side, I felt like the girl from my dreams. She was a sort of modern Miss Havisham in her own right.
But my pen gives me power of expression, and I used that power to take my memories back. I went through each memory that had been taken from me and I took it back. I wrote myself a list of advice... a general guide for what I should have done.
Don't chase.
Ask more question about this and that.
Insist on better medical care.
You are not a fix.
I went into detail in each paragraph of advice, telling my old self how to do, what to do.
Don't ditch class.
Buy him gifts that are not sexual.
Don't have sex on your honeymoon.
Go on organized dates with no sexual agenda.
As the words poured out of me, I was angry. It was unfiltered, righteous indignation. The guilt that normally prevents me from honest anger was not allowed in the Harry Potter room.
The next morning, I woke up on my own before 6 am. I stepped into the shower and set the water as hot as I can stand it (boil a lobster has always been my default shower setting). I sat on the shower floor and let the hot water and steam cleanse me. Water, both literal and living, has been on the forefront of my recovery journey. After I'd soaked and steamed and cleansed for long enough, I wrapped myself in a lovely thick robe and climbed back into bed.
I put the pen to paper and once again wrote my truth. My angry words from the night before were a few pages and a hot shower behind me...and I wrote an unexpected invitation.
"I finally truly see reality, and as I face it with wild desire to escape, I welcome you into it. My bare memory walls need to be filled... I am going to be hard to live with for awhile as I exert my voice and give reign to my inner core... and with that, I issue an invitation... you come too."
And so it was with nervousness in his voice that he called and asked me on a date.
Lots of couples can go for five months without a date. It seems like no big thing, just another Wednesday night, right?
But for us -tonight -we are starting over.
It's a delicate pearl ring and Robert Frost kinda thing.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
To the Right
I've had this blog for just over a year, but I think it's important to note that I've been blogging for YEARS. I mean, I've been blogging since before it was cool (hello, 2005). I still blog. I have a family blog that I used to blog daily on, but I've quit lately because.
Because I've been writing THIS blog. Through all of this -and by "this" I mean years and years of writing intimate details about my husband and our glass-house living, my husband never touched the stuff.
Until now.
So... to the right (your right). Under my picture...
Look out, world. I'm contagious. I wonder if I can get him to take up crochet? Joking, babe. Mostly joking.
Because I've been writing THIS blog. Through all of this -and by "this" I mean years and years of writing intimate details about my husband and our glass-house living, my husband never touched the stuff.
Until now.
So... to the right (your right). Under my picture...
Look out, world. I'm contagious. I wonder if I can get him to take up crochet? Joking, babe. Mostly joking.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Guilt
A couple of months ago, I got mad at my husband. I didn't hold back.
My pattern has always BEEN told hold back. If I really, truly told him how I felt, it would hurt him. I didn't want to hurt him. When he was hurt, he acted out. He mismanaged that hurt. I couldn't handle the GUILT that came with hurting him. So I would walk away, shove my emotions deep down and then come back.
In short: I was too scared, too full of fear to be fully honest with my husband.
I thought I was being Christ-like and sort of applauded myself for being so skilled at managing my temper.
I scratch my head at that logic now...
My husband did something addiction-related that was not okay with me. And when he told me about it, I didn't shove anything down. I wasn't scared. I told him EXACTLY how I felt.
I was so mad there wasn't any room for guilt.
In fact, the guilt never came! It didn't come afterward when he yelled at me. It didn't come after THAT, when I felt like a third person observer and realized just how messed up our dynamic was. And it didn't even come after that... when I excused myself from our current marriage and took a figurative taxi cab to a safe room with only my name attached to the address.
It still hasn't come, and I'm amazed. As concerns my decision to be done with our marriage, I don't feel guilt.
But yesterday, I guilt about something else, something addiction related.
A few days ago, before my husband left for training, he told me that lately I've been mean. It isn't like me, and he misses me.
I've mulled that over since he said it.
No one has ever called me mean. At least, not since I was living at home with 5 siblings and MIGHT have taken Easter Candy from the smaller ones who couldn't hurt me.
I phoned a friend who has walked this path before to work through some of my emotions, the greatest of which is anger. I told her I was mad.
She said (I'm quoting her directly), "Good!"
Good.
Good?
Isn't anger bad? Isn't not Christ-like?
Enter: Guilt.
I made dinner and read scriptures with the kids. I did dishes (PS: this isn't very normal for me to do ALL of this in one night, so I have to put it in the story somehow so you'll all be amazed that I made dinner, bathed the children, read scriptures, said prayers, AND did dishes! all in one night!) and the thought came to me as clear as day.
Why haven't I been mean before? Before recently?
Why NOW? The sealing covenant I made has been shattered repeatedly, stomped on! I have been pushed aside time after time after time for other women in the name of fantasy. And THROUGH IT ALL, I worked harder to be seen! And I was not seen.
I birthed children through all of this. I invested and invested and invested. At times, I was confessed to daily. And did I cry? No. Did I get angry? No. Did I tell him how I really felt? Only after I hit a breaking point after a few YEARS. And even then, I wasn't mad. I was just sad.
Isn't that ODD?
There is something WRONG WITH THAT.
There is something wrong with the fact that I was never mean. The natural woman would be! The natural woman would be angry and probably mean about it all. Does that mean it's okay? I don't know. Probably not. But natural? Oh heck yes!
And it SHOULD be that way. Women SHOULD be upset when they're pushed aside for something else, something superficial and insatiable. Women should FEEL their true worth and value in the mess! They should not only know they are enough but feel it as well.
It wasn't until I felt it -TWO short months ago (nine years into the messity-mess) -that I got mad.
This anger is new to me. It's coursing though me and confusing me.
My friend who rejoiced in my finally feeling it, encouraged me to write a letter to my husband -an angry letter.
What a good idea! I went through my day yesterday and tried to compose one in my head, but something stopped me.
It was GUILT.
I can't feel angry. I can't say *this* or *that*. It isn't Christ-like.
Today, I will work to surrender my guilt. Today I will hit my knees and ask God to please take it so I can let loose my unfiltered anger, and if I do act in such a way that displeases God, I will make amends. But for now? It needs to come out before my entire soul, both body and spirit, become ill.
The fact of the matter is this: I have felt and endured betrayal and haven't been angry about it.
THAT isn't healthy or natural or doing anyone (except the addict) any good at all.
Finding a healthy way to channel my anger is going to be a new journey -a new challenge -a new discovery.
In the meantime, I'll keep two songs on repeat.
(the lyric video using texts is so safe. The official video is pretty... well, let's just say it didn't do much for improving my anger.)
My pattern has always BEEN told hold back. If I really, truly told him how I felt, it would hurt him. I didn't want to hurt him. When he was hurt, he acted out. He mismanaged that hurt. I couldn't handle the GUILT that came with hurting him. So I would walk away, shove my emotions deep down and then come back.
In short: I was too scared, too full of fear to be fully honest with my husband.
I thought I was being Christ-like and sort of applauded myself for being so skilled at managing my temper.
I scratch my head at that logic now...
My husband did something addiction-related that was not okay with me. And when he told me about it, I didn't shove anything down. I wasn't scared. I told him EXACTLY how I felt.
I was so mad there wasn't any room for guilt.
In fact, the guilt never came! It didn't come afterward when he yelled at me. It didn't come after THAT, when I felt like a third person observer and realized just how messed up our dynamic was. And it didn't even come after that... when I excused myself from our current marriage and took a figurative taxi cab to a safe room with only my name attached to the address.
It still hasn't come, and I'm amazed. As concerns my decision to be done with our marriage, I don't feel guilt.
But yesterday, I guilt about something else, something addiction related.
A few days ago, before my husband left for training, he told me that lately I've been mean. It isn't like me, and he misses me.
I've mulled that over since he said it.
No one has ever called me mean. At least, not since I was living at home with 5 siblings and MIGHT have taken Easter Candy from the smaller ones who couldn't hurt me.
I phoned a friend who has walked this path before to work through some of my emotions, the greatest of which is anger. I told her I was mad.
She said (I'm quoting her directly), "Good!"
Good.
Good?
Isn't anger bad? Isn't not Christ-like?
Enter: Guilt.
I made dinner and read scriptures with the kids. I did dishes (PS: this isn't very normal for me to do ALL of this in one night, so I have to put it in the story somehow so you'll all be amazed that I made dinner, bathed the children, read scriptures, said prayers, AND did dishes! all in one night!) and the thought came to me as clear as day.
Why haven't I been mean before? Before recently?
Why NOW? The sealing covenant I made has been shattered repeatedly, stomped on! I have been pushed aside time after time after time for other women in the name of fantasy. And THROUGH IT ALL, I worked harder to be seen! And I was not seen.
I birthed children through all of this. I invested and invested and invested. At times, I was confessed to daily. And did I cry? No. Did I get angry? No. Did I tell him how I really felt? Only after I hit a breaking point after a few YEARS. And even then, I wasn't mad. I was just sad.
Isn't that ODD?
There is something WRONG WITH THAT.
There is something wrong with the fact that I was never mean. The natural woman would be! The natural woman would be angry and probably mean about it all. Does that mean it's okay? I don't know. Probably not. But natural? Oh heck yes!
And it SHOULD be that way. Women SHOULD be upset when they're pushed aside for something else, something superficial and insatiable. Women should FEEL their true worth and value in the mess! They should not only know they are enough but feel it as well.
It wasn't until I felt it -TWO short months ago (nine years into the messity-mess) -that I got mad.
This anger is new to me. It's coursing though me and confusing me.
My friend who rejoiced in my finally feeling it, encouraged me to write a letter to my husband -an angry letter.
What a good idea! I went through my day yesterday and tried to compose one in my head, but something stopped me.
It was GUILT.
I can't feel angry. I can't say *this* or *that*. It isn't Christ-like.
Today, I will work to surrender my guilt. Today I will hit my knees and ask God to please take it so I can let loose my unfiltered anger, and if I do act in such a way that displeases God, I will make amends. But for now? It needs to come out before my entire soul, both body and spirit, become ill.
The fact of the matter is this: I have felt and endured betrayal and haven't been angry about it.
THAT isn't healthy or natural or doing anyone (except the addict) any good at all.
Finding a healthy way to channel my anger is going to be a new journey -a new challenge -a new discovery.
In the meantime, I'll keep two songs on repeat.
(the lyric video using texts is so safe. The official video is pretty... well, let's just say it didn't do much for improving my anger.)
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Wives Against Porn Driving
--Before we begin, the winner of the hatchet charm is NATE('s wife). Please contact me via email at brabadges@hotmail.com and I'll mail it out next week! --
A few months ago, I was struck with how awesome it would be to organize P.U.R.E.
Porn Use Resistance Education.
Get it? PURE? It's genius. Aaaaaaaand total rip off from D.A.R.E.
But anyway. This post isn't about education. It's about how yesterday I woke up and began getting ready for work while my husband did a counseling session via webcam with Brannon Patrick. I wish I could say the BEST thing that ever happened to our marriage was our three wonderful kiddos. But it's Brannon. Right now, it's Brannon.
I went around the house in my PJs, getting our daughter ready for school and planning my day in my head. I worked REALLY hard NOT to hear what was being said in my bedroom... because I didn't want to know. When I started hearing snippets of the conversation, I'd start singing the first song that came to my head.
"Walkin' the floor
Feelin' so blue.
Smoke cigarettes.
Drink coffee too..."
Since I started working, my classic country music streaming has increased by about 3005% and it's amazing how many old country songs resonate with a jaded lady.
But then my husband popped out and ASKED me to please join him. So I did, in all of my just-rolled-out-of-bed glory. Online meetings are the best.
I only talked with Brannon for about 15 minutes, and I really like the guy.
But he totally ruined my day. No offense, man!
My husband is leaving on Monday morning for a two-month long training. He will be home on weekends.
"Are you feeling fear?" Brannon asked.
"No," I said.
"Why not? Is it because you trust him to stay sober or because you don't care?"
"I don't care," I shrugged.
He then told me that was okay... I was in an okay place.
And then he said it... the worst word to hear in a counseling session.
BUT.
"But... eventually you'll need to come to place where you do care, where you can begin to reinvest and fall back in love. It's a hard thing, Alicia, and it's just not fair."
I like that he uses my first name. I think he's the only person who calls me by my first name even when he's not mad.
I walked away from that session and just blew up a little. A LITTLE, not much.
"It's like you're a drunk driver," I said to my husband, "And you HIT me. I went to the hospital and they were nice to me and loved me and then the nurses patted me on the head and said, 'okay, pretty soon you've got to get back in that car and drive that same road and the same drunk driver will be there with you. Hope he's sober!"
It's NOT fair.
It's not fair that I've worked SO hard to detach, to be safe, to be empowered.
And where do I find myself? I'm LONELY, guys. Straight up, no mincing words... I'm lonely. This sucks.
It seems like everywhere I turn people are telling me this isn't about me, that I'm not the victim. But I always end up controlled by this situation -I seem to spin on an axis that revolves around HIS choices, and I always end up hurt OR I end up lonely. The fact of the matter is: I AM the victim. I HAVE been hit by a drunk.
Of course I can't live in that mentality, but it's okay to own it and be mad about it when I feel the gravity of it.
I appreciate empowerment, but I don't appreciate being lonely.
I appreciate not being hurt and playing the victim, but I don't appreciate how hard and cold I feel.
Brannon had said some of the richest blessings in life come from human relationships, and here I was all walled off and thinking how some of my most awful hurts had come from human relationships.
As I made a bottle in the late afternoon, I thought about this... I hadn't wanted to talk to my husband all day because in 15 short minutes that morning he'd gone from being my husband to being my offender.
I filled baby's bottle and added formula and shook, shook, shook. As I did, it came to me. As clear as day, I SAW it.
Yes, I was hit. Years ago, driving wildly down a dirt road I'd never been on before I was sideswiped by my very own, very unsober husband.
I couldn't believe it, so I didn't. I haphazardly bandaged my wounds myself and then got back in the car. I drove a *little* more carefully, but still without much caution. And again: I was hit. And again, and again, and again.
For YEARS. YEARS! I tried to handle the situation on my own. I thought it was MY fault, so I tried driving better, I tried making myself more noticeable so my husband would SEEEEEEEEE me and avoid hitting me. I tried installing GPS for him.
But it was never enough. The accidents began getting worse, more blood, more tears...
Almost three years ago, it was the worst it had ever been. I couldn't get up and walk away from that accident. I just rested in the mess.
Until...
A beautiful man came. He is my Savior. He had the answers, the tools, the ambulance, and he had the power to heal me and my car. I turned to him and gave up trying.
He took me in his arms, and I found rest in his hospital. He was my primary physician and He had a team of specialists working under Him.
A sponsor.
A Therapist.
A Bishop.
My Dad.
Close friends would visit me in the hospital. Some brought food, some brought music, some brought smiles, and some brought tissues and hugs.
One visitor they couldn't keep out was my husband. He would visit me daily, if not more. His visits weren't always nice... in fact, most often they hurt me MORE. It seemed that even though I'd found my way OFF the rough dirt road, the drunk driver had found a way to manage his mission by simply STANDING by me and TALKING.
Ouch.
Ouch.
Ouch.
There were glimpses of remorse. There were glimpses of honesty.
And then there wasn't remorse or patience or empathy or apology.
My team of specialists worked under the hand of the Master Physician, and as the years went by my efforts to heal were evident. The bruises were fading. I found ways to avoid my husband when he came to visit, and new bruises quit forming.
The breaks, the cuts, the hurt... they were all healing and fading.
One day, I found I didn't NEED to avoid my husband. In fact, I confronted him. I stood in the doorway of my own room and I told him
NO.
ENOUGH.
He turned and went away. I turned and went to bed.
The next day -much to my surprise -my husband was there again. This time he looked different, he talked differently.
I sensed real remorse, true sorrow.
The next day, it was the same.
This went on for a good while. At times his visits turned ugly, and I'd ask him to leave. But for the most part, they were good visits.
The bad visits would send me back to my specialists with anger and spit in my eyes... I would get on my knees and call my Physician and ask, "WHAT IN THE H-E-ECK-ECK I AM SUPPOSED TO DO HERE?!?!?!"
And here's my answer:
choose.
My husband is visiting me in the hospital. And when I'm ready to leave, I can CHOOSE whether I want to get back in my car (the Master Physician is also a Master Mechanic, in case you were wondering) and get back on that old dirt road. I know my husband will be there.
I get to make the choice.
My husband doesn't have that control.
Right now, I will observe his visits. And I have NO idea how to start reinvesting and falling back in love, so I won't.
I'll leave that up to my husband.
And I will rest.
I won't get up or get ready to get back on any road in any car until I know of myself that it's okay. I will know.
Because of everything going on in my life right now, I haven't been able to post this... but yesterday I remembered one of my specialists was a team led by Dr. Skinner.
I've been working on recovery for nearly THREE years. And in three years of studying and education, I have never found a program I resonated with more than AddoRecovery. The free education I gained with AddoRecovery has sustained me and helped me understand many of the WHYs.
I recommend it to so many women, and I will continue to do so. Forever.
Sidreis' Story (Short) from Addo Recovery on Vimeo.
Betrayal Trauma is REAL. Even if you can't physically see the blood and the breaks, you can FEEL them.
It's a few days too late to join the latest session (SORRY!) but there's a new one coming up on the 17th of this month.
Please go to addorecovery.com/join... there's a team of specialists for YOU.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Then Comes the Anger
Earlier this month, we had our 9-year anniversary.
During those nine years, I've watched other couples -I've watched how they communicated, how they made decisions, how they interacted. I was often struck with how brave other wives were... they would buy things without asking their husbands first, make decisions on their own, even go so far as to lay down rules about what they were or were not comfortable with (like violent video games). They offered up advice that was heard. They could listen to advice and still think for themselves. They were equals in their marriage... a concept that had eluded our marriage.
I wanted that. I wanted it badly.
And as I got into recovery and started to see just how much damage had been done by addiction, I began grieving.
Those grieving days were awful days in our home. The children ate a lot of cold cereal, and I shed a lot of tears.
I moved into acceptance, and I was relieved to feel that my grieving was -for the most part -over.
But guess what?
I skipped a step.
In the process of observing other couples, I saw one very fascinating trend: the couples I admired the most were upfront with each other -they weren't afraid of reactions or repercussions. They were honest with each other outright. They got MAD at each other.
I just couldn't DO that. I couldn't get mad at my husband. I couldn't! I was too scared. I wasn't strong enough to handle his reaction. Instead of getting upset with him or at him, I'd walk away and shove the anger down until I couldn't feel it anymore and then I would go and talk things over with him.
Calmly.
Quick question: what happens when you shove emotions down? Anyone?
Yeah. They rise up and wail later on. And they're usually worse than they were when you first shoved them.
Since I snagged up a sponsor and a therapist, my recovery has had some really awesome direction. It's GOING places. One of the biggest blessings from it all is that fear and shame are being stripped away.
As fear and shame have stripped away, I've started getting angry. I'm not scared of my husband anymore. I'm MAD at him.
I accept where our relationship is at, but I'm mad about it.
I'm angry because I'm still grieving a healthy relationship. I feel cheated, and I feel short-changed. I feel all of these rotten emotions that I felt earlier in my recovery.
When I first felt them, I denied them, ignored them, felt sad about them, wept bitter tears...
And now I'm mad about them.
I think it's wonderful.
I'm finally strong enough to be honest about my every emotion.
I finally feel safe enough to say what I'm thinking when I'm thinking it.
I'm finally -for the first time in NINE years -being TRUE TO MYSELF.
And if that means trudging through a trench of anger, I'll do it.
It's worth it.
There's nothing more rewarding than the freedom that comes from being true to myself.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Clingy
I was sure I could love him enough.
Fill the void.
BE ENOUGH.
I clobbered him with affection, baskets full of sap... I tried losing weight, spicing it up, baking, cleaning.
It wasn't enough. I wasn't enough.
So I pushed harder, farther, NEVER CONTENT with not being enough. I had always been enough. Something like PORN wasn't about to best me.
I set aside myself. The only thing that mattered was being enough, being available at all times.
If porn made him happy, I would be porn. I would be sexy, available AT ALL TIMES, exciting, new, fresh...
Just typing that truth out makes me hurt. Did I really DO that? Yes. Yes, I did do that.
I would follow him around the house. Available. I wouldn't wear it if he didn't like it, wouldn't bake it if he didn't approve. I was the first to reach over in the morning and hold his hand... always saying "I love you." I said it so much, so frequently, it seemed overused and therefore not as sincerely reciprocated (probably because he didn't know how to love back?).
Could he SEE how much I loved him?
Could he FEEL it?
His actions didn't warrant the response I desired, so what did I do?
I pushed harder, farther...
But resentment began to creep in. I resented him. I shoved it down.
Then rejection, dejection, depression, self-loathing began to creep in.
This weekend, I initiated some kissing. THAT'S IT. KISSING. I reached out for his hand first thing in the morning.
That's all it took to dredge up all of those awful, moldy, rotten old emotions.
I recoiled. The wave of emotions ran through and through and through me. Stupid triggers. STUPID trauma. STUPID.
I started thinking about detaching. Detaching is hard. So many times, I've forced detaching. I've pulled away even when all I wanted to do was check his phone. I've left the room, even when all I wanted to do was stay and manipulate information out of him.
As the old emotions of rejection and depression coursed through my soul, I realized something:
Detaching isn't hard. Detachment is simply the natural consequence of emotional health. If I turn to my talents and interests (to Heavenly Father)... if I have personal goals and dreams... if I focus on my health and self-improvement, I WILL BE detached.
It won't be forced or complicated or over-thought.
It will just... BE.
And I will soar.
What more? I WILL BE ENOUGH, and I will see that there never, ever, EVER was a time that I wasn't.
EVER.
EV.
ER.
Fill the void.
BE ENOUGH.
I clobbered him with affection, baskets full of sap... I tried losing weight, spicing it up, baking, cleaning.
It wasn't enough. I wasn't enough.
So I pushed harder, farther, NEVER CONTENT with not being enough. I had always been enough. Something like PORN wasn't about to best me.
I set aside myself. The only thing that mattered was being enough, being available at all times.
If porn made him happy, I would be porn. I would be sexy, available AT ALL TIMES, exciting, new, fresh...
Just typing that truth out makes me hurt. Did I really DO that? Yes. Yes, I did do that.
I would follow him around the house. Available. I wouldn't wear it if he didn't like it, wouldn't bake it if he didn't approve. I was the first to reach over in the morning and hold his hand... always saying "I love you." I said it so much, so frequently, it seemed overused and therefore not as sincerely reciprocated (probably because he didn't know how to love back?).
Could he SEE how much I loved him?
Could he FEEL it?
His actions didn't warrant the response I desired, so what did I do?
I pushed harder, farther...
But resentment began to creep in. I resented him. I shoved it down.
Then rejection, dejection, depression, self-loathing began to creep in.
This weekend, I initiated some kissing. THAT'S IT. KISSING. I reached out for his hand first thing in the morning.
That's all it took to dredge up all of those awful, moldy, rotten old emotions.
I recoiled. The wave of emotions ran through and through and through me. Stupid triggers. STUPID trauma. STUPID.
I started thinking about detaching. Detaching is hard. So many times, I've forced detaching. I've pulled away even when all I wanted to do was check his phone. I've left the room, even when all I wanted to do was stay and manipulate information out of him.
As the old emotions of rejection and depression coursed through my soul, I realized something:
Detaching isn't hard. Detachment is simply the natural consequence of emotional health. If I turn to my talents and interests (to Heavenly Father)... if I have personal goals and dreams... if I focus on my health and self-improvement, I WILL BE detached.
It won't be forced or complicated or over-thought.
It will just... BE.
And I will soar.
What more? I WILL BE ENOUGH, and I will see that there never, ever, EVER was a time that I wasn't.
EVER.
EV.
ER.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
The "H" Word
Once upon a time, I entered the world of recovery because I was an unmanageable mess. In a painful process of discovery and education, I began to understand how to live -truly live -again.
This morning, I woke up and and was amazed that despite the Mess that is My Marriage, I still functioned. I still laughed.
The garden was weeded.
The grass was watered.
The children attended swimming lessons.
I received an hour of training at my new job.
There were phone conversations and sandwiches and make up and baths and a gigantic slip n' slide at the park.
Why? WHY?
Because there's no hope. I have no hope. Without hope, there is no hurt. Without hope, I'm safe.
At least, that's what I thought.
And then, I met with the Stake President tonight. He called me for I Didn't Know What, and as he questioned me about a variety of things, he asked me some very pointed questions about my roll as a wife.
I was honest with him. I told him about my weekend, about my job, about my circumstances -all of which he was completely unaware of.
And then I admitted OUT LOUD -with a quick disclaimer that I wasn't happy about it -that I did have hope.
I did hope that we would be okay.
I drove away from the Stake President's Office. I went to Wal-Mart. I bought a bag of dark chocolate covered blueberries.
I ate them on the road home in a nervous, stressful fitful state.
HOPE! HOPE!
If I have hope, I'm not safe anymore...
In my shin-length polyester skirt that looks like something out of the 60s (which I actually think it is), I felt stark naked, vulnerable, exposed. I was a sitting stupid susceptible duck.
After ALL the hurt.
After ALL the years.
After it ALL.
I still felt hope. I called my sponsor and tried to talk it out, work it out in my head. I called my husband and started saying things like, "I'm married, but not. But not single. But I'm your wife. But I don't feel like it."
All the while stuffing my mouth with self-loathing and chocolate.
"I promise to forget you ever said the word HOPE," my husband said, "As far as I'm concerned, you don't have any."
I came home, hit my knees in prayer and asked my Father in Heaven OUTRIGHT.
"Does feeling hope mean that I am weak? stupid? susceptible?"
And the answer came... clearly, distinctly, "Alicia, hope is part of the Atonement. Your hope is in the Atonement."
Peace flooded through my being.
Except for my stomach, which had to be excused on account of the nausea induced by the bag of chocolate.
I DO feel hope.
I do HAVE hope.
For a few awful hours tonight, I thought my hope was anchored in my husband, and that thought was enough to send me into insanity. But the truth is, my hope is anchored firmly in the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
The Atonement has the power to change men.
The Atonement has the power to heal broken hearts.
No matter what the future holds, the Atonement applies to it -a blanket, miraculous balm.
I trust in it and I hope in it.
And THAT is something that makes me rather the opposite of weak, naked, susceptible, vulnerable, and stupid.
I don't WANT my husband to forget I ever said it.
Before he left for his training this week, I told him I couldn't say the H word.
But one enlightening conversation and empty bag of chocolate later... I CAN say it, and I WILL say it.
I hope on.
This morning, I woke up and and was amazed that despite the Mess that is My Marriage, I still functioned. I still laughed.
The garden was weeded.
The grass was watered.
The children attended swimming lessons.
I received an hour of training at my new job.
There were phone conversations and sandwiches and make up and baths and a gigantic slip n' slide at the park.
Why? WHY?
Because there's no hope. I have no hope. Without hope, there is no hurt. Without hope, I'm safe.
At least, that's what I thought.
And then, I met with the Stake President tonight. He called me for I Didn't Know What, and as he questioned me about a variety of things, he asked me some very pointed questions about my roll as a wife.
I was honest with him. I told him about my weekend, about my job, about my circumstances -all of which he was completely unaware of.
And then I admitted OUT LOUD -with a quick disclaimer that I wasn't happy about it -that I did have hope.
I did hope that we would be okay.
I drove away from the Stake President's Office. I went to Wal-Mart. I bought a bag of dark chocolate covered blueberries.
I ate them on the road home in a nervous, stressful fitful state.
HOPE! HOPE!
If I have hope, I'm not safe anymore...
In my shin-length polyester skirt that looks like something out of the 60s (which I actually think it is), I felt stark naked, vulnerable, exposed. I was a sitting stupid susceptible duck.
After ALL the hurt.
After ALL the years.
After it ALL.
I still felt hope. I called my sponsor and tried to talk it out, work it out in my head. I called my husband and started saying things like, "I'm married, but not. But not single. But I'm your wife. But I don't feel like it."
All the while stuffing my mouth with self-loathing and chocolate.
"I promise to forget you ever said the word HOPE," my husband said, "As far as I'm concerned, you don't have any."
I came home, hit my knees in prayer and asked my Father in Heaven OUTRIGHT.
"Does feeling hope mean that I am weak? stupid? susceptible?"
And the answer came... clearly, distinctly, "Alicia, hope is part of the Atonement. Your hope is in the Atonement."
Peace flooded through my being.
Except for my stomach, which had to be excused on account of the nausea induced by the bag of chocolate.
I DO feel hope.
I do HAVE hope.
For a few awful hours tonight, I thought my hope was anchored in my husband, and that thought was enough to send me into insanity. But the truth is, my hope is anchored firmly in the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
The Atonement has the power to change men.
The Atonement has the power to heal broken hearts.
No matter what the future holds, the Atonement applies to it -a blanket, miraculous balm.
I trust in it and I hope in it.
And THAT is something that makes me rather the opposite of weak, naked, susceptible, vulnerable, and stupid.
I don't WANT my husband to forget I ever said it.
Before he left for his training this week, I told him I couldn't say the H word.
But one enlightening conversation and empty bag of chocolate later... I CAN say it, and I WILL say it.
I hope on.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Breaking Free
(The Man Who Taught Me About Breaking Free)
Last night as I drifted off to sleep, I thought about Ribbon.
Not quite twenty years ago, I rode Ribbon. She wasn't the most gentle horse, and little kids weren't allowed to ride her. She was stubborn and spirited -only experienced riders could manage her.
"Take her out as far as you can," my Dad said as I mounted her, "And then turn around and let her run back."
Run? RUN?!
I'd never done that on a horse before. I was terrified of animals, but I could manage well enough with the kiddie horses that walked slowly and never chomped at the bit for anything. But Ribbon? She might as well have been a fire-breathing dragon. I was terrified of her and the idea of running her.
The only thing more terrifying than the task at hand was disappointing Dad -the John Wayne of my life. I never argued with him.
I started walking Ribbon away from the rest of the horses, away from the truck with a bucket full of grain and oats in the back, away from my Dad... She didn't mind at first.
But when I took her farther than she wanted to go, she tried to turn around. My heart pounded with fear.
"No," I said, "No..." my voice was shaking, but I was determined, "We have to keep going."
She fought, she tossed her head, she stomped.
"No," I said, fully aware that she could tell how scared I was, "No, girl."
I forced her down the field, the hacked off, dead remnants of corn at her hooves... farther and farther away. I looked back to see how far.
I had to gauge the distance just right -far enough away that she'd have ample time to pick up speed... if I gave into fear and turned around too soon, it would be for naught. Dad would send me back. I'd have to start over.
My heart pounded, my hands shook. I hated Ribbon in that moment.
The feeling was mutual.
In what felt like an eternity, I finally reached the point where I could let her break free.
I would have to let go of the control I had on the reigns.
I had no idea what was before me. I was putting my small ten year old life in the hands of an animal I was terrified of.
I pulled back on the reigns and took a deep, halting breath as she came to a fighting halt.
"Okay," I whispered to myself more that Ribbon. I tugged on the reigns so slightly -gave her a faint HINT that now she could run, and that was all she needed.
She took off.
My heart wanted to beat out of my chest as I slackened my grip on the reigns and felt the ground beneath her hooves. Control was not mine in that moment.
Her rough gait soon evened into a something surprisingly smooth... I exhaled as exhilaration replaced fear. I felt the fresh country air breezing past my face. I felt... strong.
And just as soon as it started, it was over.
"How was that?" My Dad asked as I climbed down.
"Crazy!" I gushed. I couldn't believe I had done it. My Dad was so proud. I was so proud.
I fell asleep last night with that memory -one I hadn't thought of since the day it came to pass in the mid 90s.
Last night, I broke free.
All it took was one slight tug on my reigns, and I turned tail and RAN.
I'm done with this marriage and the man in it. I'm tired. I'm emotionless.
In the coming month, I'm opening my own checking/savings account. I've also secured a job. I'm not leaving. But I'm done investing. Did I say that already? That I was done?
It seems to final, so intolerant, so FINAL.
I'm still living with my husband, but I'm not in this marriage anymore, nor do I want it.
"Investing in this marriage is like pouring water into a bucket that's taken a buckshot round," I told him, "And then getting mad when my feet get wet."
It's all on him now.
I'm running free in the country, seeking independence, and leaning on the Lord -my John Wayne in the sky, prompting me on a journey I've never taken. I'm afraid. It's the fire-breathing dragon all over again.
The gait is rough right now -I'm only just beginning. But if I let go of control, if I hold on for dear life while the ground flies under my feet, if I focus on my Father, I know that before I realize it, I'll be breathing easy and the gait will graduate from rough to even and eventually? to smooth.
And there will be strength.
I do love my husband. And today, I like my husband (let's not talk about yesterday, okay?).
I do pray for him and want success for him.
But I don't want to be married to him anymore.
If my future includes marriage, it won't be to the man I'm sleeping next to tonight.
If my future includes marriage, it will be to someone different.
The marriage will be different.
There will be change.
I have no expectations of my husband, I have no hope.
I have only the knowledge that I will do the next thing the Lord has for me to do. Right now, He's prompted me toward independence, toward packing money away, toward loving my own husband as a deeply personal family member and nothing more... pure love.
I'm breaking free.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Diamond Lost
It broke in the Spring of '12. The CZ fell out of it. I've always had a CZ in it. I HAVE a diamond to put in it, I just haven't ever done it. My husband proposed with a CZ ring and then made payments on the diamond. When the diamond arrived, we were so excited... and then we let it sit for about 8 years. and counting.
Truth is: I like my CZ. When I looked down That Fateful Day and saw the prongs had broken off and the CZ had fallen out, I was surprised at how sad I felt. I shouldn't have felt sad, I mean... it was the perfect opportunity to have the real diamond put in! But I realized then, as Anne Shirley realized her love of Gilbert Blythe the night she learned he was dying, I loved my fake diamond. It was my own Book of Revelation, so to speak.
I DO love my fake diamond, quite a lot more than my real diamond, in fact.
I retraced my steps and combed over the ground... I wanted my CZ. Why? WHY? I could have easily paid $30 or so and had a new one in my hands, but I wanted THAT CZ.
It had been there with me through sin and miscarriage, through discoveries and confession. How I had wanted to tear it off in fits of rage and tears only to be captivated by it's beauty, by the sacrifices made on it's behalf.
Never could I look into the CZ and remain very angry because in it I could see my husband's pleading, nervous eyes... I could see his excitement, his planning, his desire to purchase the ring of my dreams.
I wanted that CZ.
Days went by, and I soon gave up hope. After all: wasn't I putting my heart into the wrong kind of treasure? It isn't as if My CZ will follow me to heaven.
Two weeks later, I sat on the bench by my door. My Dad was standing above me, and we talked over the day. I glanced down and saw something... probably something the kids left on the floor. I picked it up with an absent mind only to find that it was, in very fact, MY CZ!
Miracles never cease... and thank goodness my vacuum isn't top-o-the-line. I'd vacuumed that floor several times and it had missed my lost jewel.
My ring still sits in my jewelry box, naked of a prime diamond. My CZ sits in her own special spot, my diamond in her box.
My finger is bare.
I've very much married in my mind, so I didn't think much of it... not until I was hit on by a man in the church parking lot. He managed to hit on me and ask about every woman who walked by as well, intending "to move forward and begin a family as I've been commanded," as he said.
I thought again of my broken ring. It doesn't fit. It broke at the beginning of my pregnancy, and my fingers have gone up one blessed size, post-baby.
I admitted to my husband a scheme I'd been scheming.
"I want a new ring made with my CZ," I said.
He didn't understand. My wedding ring is beautiful. It is REALLY beautiful. It's been on the receiving end of compliments from strangers and friends alike. I adore it.
"Why?" He asked.
I want a new ring because I want a new marriage. But I also want my old ring.
It has everything to do with sentiment and nothing to do with being spoiled. Promise.
There are parts of our marriage I do not want to let go of. There are parts of our past and our past bond that are sacred to me -my ring is symbolic of those.
BUT.
That ring -and that marriage -is broken.
The ring I want now mirrors the kind of marriage I want: simple, pure, and personal.
I want to wear it everyday. I want to get it covered in bread dough and dish water, freshly cut grass, and garden soil. I want it there to touch fevered heads, wipe teary eyes, and make peanut butter sandwiches for picnics. It doesn't draw attention or compliments. It's sure of what it is, what it represents, and it isn't trying to impress or prove anything.
I want that ring.
I'll have my wedding to wear to weddings and church and receptions and funerals and date nights. But for everyday reality, give me my simple ring.
I'm not ready for it now. Our relationship is only just starting to rebuild. We're only beginning to really see each other.
My old ring says, "I love you."
The ring I want says, "I see you."
The processes of learning to see is a very slow one. Do I even truly *see* myself? Do I truly see my husband?
Where there is a pure connection, there will be simplicity, there will be a newness and brightness... there will be tangible hope.
Right now hope feels elusive. Present! but elusive in it's own mysterious way.
Setting my sights on a ring gives me something tangible. It's what's right for me.
And like the young couple in love with no money, we will save our quarters for such a ring as that.
We are starting over. But not. But are.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Anniversaries
(dating tip for the Single Girl, 1938)
My husband doesn't forget anniversaries.
He remembers the day we became an official couple, the day we said "I love you," the day we became engaged... he remembers that on the way to meet his family, we stopped at a gas station and bought a huge bag of Reeses Pieces which I consumed out of nervousness (I'd never met anyone's parents I didn't already know). He remembers the overalls I wore the night we stayed up talking until 4 am. He remembers the sweats I was wearing the day we met for the first time.
I woke up this morning and didn't realize that today is one of the lesser anniversaries -the kind other people forget but my husband does not. It wasn't until I glanced at my phone in my half-awake stupor and saw the date that it hit me. I texted my husband a quick, "Happy Anniversary. Love you." And on his insistence, I secured a sitter and we spent 2 full hours alone tonight. Well, alone plus the people at Sonic and Wal-Mart.
We talked.
We talked about what we would tell ourselves nine years ago (when we were dating), but when my husband said something about "I'd tell myself to get a handle on this whole porn thing" something just... flipped inside of me. I didn't want to talk about This Whole Porn Thing.
I wanted porn to take a backseat (for lack of better phraseology).
We ate ice cream and talked about buffalo hunting, buffalo sighting, bucket lists, putting "see a real live buffalo" on our bucket list.
We talked about Santa, and we both learned that each of us figured out the whole "Santa" thing when we'd asked for toys that weren't sold in stores (he wanted a flying suit. I wanted a four foot treasure troll). When we were denied, we KNEW.
I didn't know that about my husband. I didn't know he was as smart as me.
(That's a little joke, just in case you don't know me well enough by now).
We talked about weeping willow trees and I learned that he hates them. He learned that they're my favorite of All The Trees (we're not sure how to reconcile this yet. I won't even get started on our opposing Sour Cream views, bloody World War III).
We talked about daisies dyed to look patriotic. I told them I couldn't stand dyed flowers because they just... they're the hookers of the floral section, okay? all painted up unnatural waiting for someone to take them home...
He bought me white daisies. My second favorite flower.
Porn has infected our relationship, and I can't always NOT talk about it. I can't always put porn in the backseat (which, incidentally, is it's favorite spot). Sometimes when we're alone, I spew porn education, quotes, data, scriptures, information... and if he asks me to please stop, it's like putting a kink in a hose (oh my gosh, I'm on a freakin ROLL with the awful phrasing tonight).
Eventually it all spews out and attacks anyone and everyone standing nearby.
And should my husband have wanted to talk about porn, we would have. But it turns out, we really DO have so much more to talk about.
Did you know it's illegal to own a skunk as a pet in at least 15 states?
There's a dead skunk nearby... it's roadkill and it's so gross. The Arizona sun is making it stink to high hell.
As I drove my son's friend home today, I said, "Oh, poor skunk... it went to Heaven."
"Heaven?" the little boy asked.
"Yeah."
"Why?" Kids love that word, bless their little hearts.
"It got hit by a car."
"My mom didn't hit it," he said, defensively.
"I don't think she did," I said, "It probably happened last night. Skunks usually only come out at night."
"It went to Heaven at night?" He asked.
"I think so."
"Hmmm... the only place I go at night is Mee-Maw's house."
Okay, it made me laugh so hard I had to bite my cheek.
And that's what we talked about tonight.
Happy Smaller Anniversary to us. Happy unhookery daisies on the table.
Happy glimpses of hope.
Happy.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Overnighter
My husband just got home from an overnight work thing-y.
I enjoyed him being gone... not in the "good, he's GONE" kind of way, but in the "yay! less dishes!" kind of way.
I visited with my sisters-in-law and listened as they expounded on their inability to sleep if their husbands are gone, and then I went home at 10:15 pm and slept soundly... alone in my bed.
Years ago, it was a different story entirely. When my husband worked graveyards, I was a mess. I would call him constantly.
"Would you drive by and spotlight the house?"
"I think I heard something..."
"Where are you?"
I tried not to hassle him, so I would spend a lot of time tossing and turning with a pit of fear in my stomach.
All that time alone, at night, alone, with his smart phone...
Toss, turn, toss, turn.
Progress, right? It felt like progress right up until the point when he came home and I felt like I was just waiting for the bomb to drop.
"I had a hard time."
"It was a rough night."
Nothing. He said nothing about it. I couldn't shake it.
Was he going to confess? Was it in my future? Was he too scared? Should I just ask?
"No," my gut said, "Let it the heck go."
All day I shook it off, and we fell asleep next to each other in a half-stupor (kids make us tired).
This morning I finally said, "This is weird. Okay? This is just weird. I feel like I'm waiting for you to come and disclose something after having stayed overnight somewhere."
"I've stayed places without problems before," he said.
"I know that... it's just... this is like a weird adjustment for me."
"Nothing happened," he chuckled.
Nothing happened.
It's true. He's not lying. And instead of me patting him on the back and giving him thumbs up, I'm standing off to the side and scratching my head.
This is weird.
What do I do with this reality?
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