All of the layers begin to unfold as we trudge on, after leaving the stage, we walk 20 feet over to our house, I don’t remember what we did. Many of our close friends come to us offering love and support. They come over and over again. The church would hold a healing service later on that evening that Kevin and I have no clue about, even though we are the reason for it. We are not invited to participate, and only find out later through friends saying how much meaning and comfort it brought them. I smile and nod, distancing myself emotionally from the absolute uprooted nature of my relationship with the church. How strange, to be a central part of something, and then not, and then be shut out of a process of healing. I stand outside of this process, intentionally or not, and feel very still. This stillness is not peace or understanding but a universal effort to keep both feet on the ground as the world has in no way stopped to accommodate me.
Everything in our lives touched
and connected to some part of the church. The church would hold a healing service later on that evening that Kevin
and I have no clue about, even though we are the reason for it. I cannot run from all of this.
I face everything head on, but not because I am strong or tough. I face
it all because I have nothing left to grasp.
I drive Elijah to school,
not fully stopping at a stop sign, I am pulled over by a police officer.
I am not sure if I was crying before he stopped me, but I do openly cry
when I hand him my license and registration. I have no idea what I did,
I am out of my mind when he tells me to stop at stop signs, and nods
when he hands everything back to me.
Elijah is in school
full-time, at some point I tell his teacher that Kevin has resigned
because of an affair and our home life is messy. Earnestly nodding, she
tells me that she will keep an eye on Elijah and let me know if anything
happens. I walk down the hallways, out of the school, no one knows what
is going on with me. Harper attends Pre-K at the church; the majority
of students, parents, and teachers attend on Sunday and serve throughout
the week. As I walk Harper towards her classroom her teacher from the
previous year looks me straight in the eye and says she is proud of me. I
am able to put one step in front of the other because of her kind
words. A lot of people, not obligated to say or give anything to me, do.
And I am still in awe of how that teacher, with little connection to
me, chose to speak out of her heart.
During the early transition
out of ministry there were so many connections with the different veins
of the church. I had attended weekly bible study for years and
pragmatically thought continuing on would be in my best interest. I did
not realize I was the proverbial elephant in the room. Many women seem
startled or intimidated by my presence. There is an enormous amount of
support; but I am still reticent about letting others into this chaos.
The group leader begins the session by saying how she was not sure how
to address what was going on with me but that the group would give
whatever I needed. Different conversations lead to others sharing their
own experiences of infidelity, how much strength I have for facing and
dealing with everything so openly. One of my friends tells me that she
was not shocked at all that I came back to bible study the Wednesday
after Kevin resigned. She says because that is who I am. I smile and
nod. Maybe more so who I was, as I, at this point, am barely standing. I
remember being present during this time, with blurry memories, and
being in a constant overwhelming state of failure.
I stop
functioning, not looking before I cross streets, really not knowing
where I am. I realize I should stop, but I do not. I cannot process how
deep all of this hurts and I don’t try. I am a zombie, going back and
forth from hysterical to near dead. Sobs pour out from me,
unprecedented, and only after a few moments, I am completely silent,
feeling nothing. I sit, then kneel on the floor and pray. Help me is all
I can muster to ask. Help me becomes the only manageable outlook. Help
me, I pray because everything I have done before this moment is for
nothing. All my actions or potential strategies are exhausted; being
alone with my emotions is completely foreign. I give up. I don’t know.
There is no present, there is no future, and the past is so painful, I
refuse to be impaled by it. I am reluctant to know what happened between
Kevin and the individual; naturally I fear that if I know what happened
I will never be able to forget and I will always see him as I see him
now.
So many people told me that Kevin’s actions were not my
fault; I was not responsible. Yet, I could not process anything other
than I had given my all to him and my all was not enough. Maybe my all
never had been enough. This filter shatters me. I sob a lot. On my
knees, with my head down. Hysterically telling Kevin nothing I do makes
or has made anything better. The healthy, normal marriage and family I
had been killing myself for was over, and at the same time I felt like
it had never begun. There had never been some hard fought façade to
convince others we had all of our ducks in a row. Contrasting popular
methods of shared space, I openly spoke in private and with audiences of
our shortcomings, failures, and fuck ups. I was used to navigating
through the initial shock of being candid with others, inviting them
alongside of me, as sketchy as it was.
Even though I made little attempt to be the face of Christianity or well received ministry the depth of dysfunction was high before Kevin admitted to the affair. He had been on the extreme side of strange for a while; even so, I blamed all of our dysfunction on ministry and depression. As the summer rolled on I felt like a stranger in a relationship with another stranger. Every focus of our life pointed back to the church we lived beside, after six years, I was ready to move on, believing a new life would place a new roof over our relationship. Randomly, Kevin had come home with gifts for me, a fancy pour-over coffee maker, and a dozen roses. He makes effort to talk over my ocean of grievances toward him, which was also out of the ordinary. Kevin made statements describing my behavior and our relationship being more like a parent over a child than a marriage. Of everything he shares, or of what little he shares with me, I only remember the parent over a child sentiment, mostly, because the context seemed to come not from him but some place else. I spit out the bones and try to focus on chewing the meat; any effort from Kevin is a load better than nothing. I hold on to a better than nothing string, as I had genuinely started coming to terms with the possibility that Kevin no longer wanted to be with me and was just biding time until I separated from him.
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