Asters & Dandelions

I had an affair. I had an entire second life. It was not that itch scratching fantasy like TV. It was a torturous concoction of childhood trauma, sexual trauma, alcohol abuse, and the pinnacle of my mental illness.

For my own healing, I need to share this. For my own self preservation, I cannot share the details of the actual incidents.

The biggest memories of my first year of marriage are not the fights, broken doors, words screamed, or tears cried. They are of those low conversations during the make up. The slow sensual sex that followed. I can hear the inflect in my husband’s voice, the exact sentences. I see the dim light that filled our bedroom and exactly where his hands grasped my face when he kissed me; each memory carried so much validation and security for me.

Sometime between our first and second anniversary when the calm settled over the chaos of defining what marriage meant to a couple of 20 year olds, I would have told you this long period of (mostly) peace and happiness was when we came to an understanding of what it meant to make each other happy, what it meant to live life as one.

Today, 9 months after my husband peeled away the fragile clothing to bare my naked and vulnerable lies, mistakes, and shame, I would tell you now that period was actually my husband learning all of my demons and what a monster of a human they shaped me into.. and loving me anyways. Loving me so much he was willing to live with them. The period of time I perceived as peace and happiness was actually the period of time my husband gave up so many of his visions and ideas of who he was as a man. Sculpting himself and contorting himself into the shell I required for this marriage.

During this long period of my own peace, happiness, security, growth, phases of life, identity crises, weight loss, career changes, and even still my never ending shaming, absolutes, and labels any time my husband stepped out of the prison cell of my comfort zone, my husband stood by me. When I looked at my husband, I was blindly overwhelmed by all the things I needed to see for myself to find happiness that I didn’t see how heavy the burden of loving me was. I didn’t see him shrinking beneath my expectations. I failed to notice his knees shaking under my limitations and declarations of his short comings.

I had created a world where the music always fit the mood and my demons always had the perfect beat to dance wild among my life. . and my husband loved me so much, he found himself in the corner of the room watching them dance away with all his own wants, freedoms, and self identity.

My husband’s “discovery day” will always be scorched into me like a painful brand that never seems to scab over. I remember the feeling of the duvet cover in that cheap hotel room the day he made me leave our home. I remember the dryness of the inside of my mouth from the heaves and weeps of my own guilt and shame. And just as I thought if by some miracle sleep would find me in that ice cold room with too many pillows and too much silence, I’d only ever find happiness again by never waking up, a blue bubble appeared on the screen I’d been staring at for hours: “come home”.

I can still hear the scratching of the plastic wheels of my luggage as they crossed our doorway. The luggage that didn’t even have time to hit the floor before my children engulfed me “Are you going to leave again?” “Will we ever see you again?” “Please don’t leave us for another man. We love you.”. My children’s voices echo in my mind forever; like the epitaph written across my entry to heaven.

As I sit on my couch scribing my deepest secrets, I can look across and see as clear as a midnight rerun, Germain and I sitting on the couch as he professed he would stay. So many questions, tears, and anger followed that initial declaration. And with all of his pain, I found a new spark of humility and gratefulness in his ability to look and me and still find something worthy.

The next eight months we had uncomfortable conversations, we tried new things, we held each other more than we had in years, we cried.. a lot, we confessed our commitment to each other.. a lot, we resented each other.. a lot. He resented me for giving me everything I ever wanted including the power to destroy him. I resented him for being unable to heal from the aftermath I left behind.

I spent those months in intensive therapy; at first with a support counselor and a psychologist and once I had learned to live with my self hate, shame, and guilt enough to make it through daily life without the constant support, I went to only seeing the psychologist.

I learned so many things I already knew. I felt all of the weight my trauma left me with, I mended and healed (*healing) the injuries left behind from carrying all of that weight.

The voices in my head telling me everything unworthy of love, respect, consent, and health stopped being only my own. They evolved into my father’s drunk screams declaring me disgusting for being a woman and therefore being sexually perverse by nature. They haunted me with my mother’s high, comatose slurs telling me I am nothing more than a victim; unable to control the circumstances I am put in. They were that family friend asking 16 year old me if he could kiss me; reminding me I am only worthy because I am sexually desirable. They were my classmates signing my yearbook “buddha” reminding me I must look acceptable to be accepted. They were the drunk breathy words of every man who touched me outside of my marriage reassuring me “I wanted it”. And yet they were still my own, asking me not “What happened to you?” but rather “What’s wrong with you?” unable to give myself acceptance and grace through my trials but instead give myself every bullet of every misstep I’ve ever taken.

I ripped every piece of me open. Nothing remained except a pile of skin, organs, facts I can’t change, and people I hurt along the way. I slowly started picking up each piece and putting them in place again. It was as if I had entered my healing an unopened puzzle, scrambled and senseless and here I am today: still finding the place where all these pieces fit.

I did all of this work, I unveiled all of this pain, I nurtured the pain and began to pick myself up for the first time in my life. All of this to share with you the triumphant light at the end of the tunnel of my journey of redemption right?

Wrong.

One week and two days ago my husband said to me: I forgive you but I can’t be here.

I did all the things. I genuinely confessed my remorse and apologies. I recommitted my love. I did the hard work and healing. I reminded him of my love for him often. I had the difficult conversations.

I healed me.

But him? He still stood in that corner of the room as I tamed my demons. He still paced the prison cell of my comfort zone. I may have, just in the past eight months, gotten acquainted with all of the demons I thought were ‘personality traits’. But him? He’s known them for a decade. The distance, the walls, the chains, the resentment, the loss of self.. these are all new to me; But him? He’s lived with these our entire marriage.

I’ve walked the last eight months trying to make up for my infidelity and trauma responses. Surely if I healed me, I can heal my marriage right?

Wrong.

Here the man who is the only safe I’ve ever known stands in the corner of the room while my demons dance. It is not until he chooses to leave I can see that it was my demons, mistakes, and trauma responses that drove him away. He spent a decade in the corner of this room and all he ever wanted was for me to ask for his hand in a dance. He never asked me to rid myself of my demons. All he ever wanted was the freedom to dance too.

Maybe I didn’t heal me (only) for the redemption of myself and marriage. Maybe I healed myself so I can heal my husband. I healed myself yet lost myself all over again. 8 months of healing feels washed away by those 8 words one week and two days ago.

For the first time in our marriage, I feel myself shrinking under the weight of not taking care of the only person who ever truly took care of me. I feel my knees shake as I realize I have no control over the one thing that brought me a sense of control.

If the world decides that redemption exists for monsters like me, I’d like to show my husband my love not by baring him down with chains that force him to stay with me but by instilling ties with him that call him back to me. I want to feel safe not by squeezing the oxygen out of him but by giving him the space he needs for the oxygen to breed growth in him. I hope to hold onto my marriage long enough that my husband can feel unconditional acceptance not by pacing that prison cell but by running as far away from it as he needs and still being able to see me right there behind him supporting his every step. I don’t want to live in a world where the best man I’ve ever known leads a worthy life of a decade to walk away with nothing more than pain and trauma he didn’t create and never deserved. Surely I live in a world where that man gets his own redemption: A life he leads sure of himself and the path he’s on.

The truth is I already live in that world. That man is capable of all of those things with or without me. . and that is the thought that has me awake confessing all of my darkest secrets.