Coming Undone (a story in three parts) Pt. 3

(wherein we are undone)

(a portion of this piece was originally published at bedlammag.com)

April is when I found the light. That’s what I always say.

That’s what I repeated to myself over and over again as I stepped out of the shower April 1st of this year. Two years since that first April when I found the light — my third April.

I began to shake as my foot hit the cold tile and I leaned out from the heat of steaming water. I bent over to catch water dripping from my legs and my breath came in gasps. Words flowed from my lips without my permission, “April is when I found the light.” I repeated them. And then other words came. The ones that I hadn’t said in a very long time. I once used them to keep myself breathing when oxygen was scarce.

“You are safe. You are strong. You are going to be okay.”

In that moment, I was aware that I was safe. The almost two years of therapy the three Aprils had brought me taught me how to keep myself safe. I’d learned to articulate what I experienced in my marriage and call it what it was — abuse. And I’d begun to heal from the terrible March that preceded that first April.

The healing was not complete.

I found my way into the bedroom where I dug into the closet for a safe shirt. Clothes have meaning to me and after tossing them all on the floor, I found the one from Bedlam emblazoned with the words “You are going to be okay.” Pulling it on, I tugged the Cardinals hoodie from my parents on over it. Curling up under a few blankets and the weight of my down comforter, I allowed myself to remember and grieve my final undoing.

If I could tell the truth about March I would say this, “March was kind of a wash. I learned I was created to write, turned thirty-two, wallowed in the darkness and was assaulted by it.”

As my Ronne said, “You tried to be the darkness. You rolled in it for awhile and called it your own. You gloried in it; plunged deep and almost drowned, until your lungs cried out for breath. Because you remembered breath, and as much as you longed for the ending it all, you craved real life.”

I did.

My therapist tells me broken often attracts broken. It will find you. It found me in the form of a man. It was ugly. Jude had found his way back into my life and if I’d learned anything from him in our moments together, it was that none of this mattered. He taught me when things got dark, this was the place you go to hide. Dive in. You can disappear here for awhile.

Take your fill of love until the morning. That’s the darkness Ronne spoke of.

That’s who I tried to be. There’s no way to say those words without shame raking it’s long twisted nails down my back hissing into the bloody scrapes it leaves, “Look at who you were. Look at what you did. You’re nothing. You’ll never be worthy of more. You’ll always have the stink of darkness on you.”

It echoed the voice of my ex-husband in January whispering in disgust as I met him to sign the divorce papers, “And whose bed did you come from?”

No one. There’d been no one then. Those words landed in my heart, planted themselves in my core, writing the new names.

Slut. Whore. Object. Nothing. That was March. Pieces of it.

I’d come into March armed with words, prepared to tell my story. It burned through me and clawed at my insides. It wanted out. Echoing in my head, it separated and regrouped, organizing itself. Forty days of story on a blog, a place where wounds could bleed freely maybe healing myself and someone who might read it. Somewhere in the slivers of my broken heart I thought maybe in it’s telling, hope could be found. Mainly the story of Jude and I, it had none of the echoes I knew it needed of learning to breath or getting those legs underneath me.

There are stories which have their moment. Sometimes they need time and space and perspective and healing so they don’t cut the person reading them. This was that story.

All the pieces of it were in place. I’d purchased the url, began building a site, even had large sections of the story written. Something felt wrong. The responsibility of my words were weighing on me. When people are actually reading the words you write, it begins to matter more how you use them. And the story I planned on telling wasn’t only my own. It was deeply personal and it was Jude’s as well. At the time, I believed I should protect him.

I should have been listening to Anne Lamott who says, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” I wonder what my therapist would say about Anne’s shoulds.

My thirty-second birthday rolled around and I was a mess. I spent most of it alone, writing. After dinner with a couple of friends, I found myself two shots in and texting with Jude. He gave me three questions as my gift. That’s fucked up. I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge how utterly fucked up that is. In the tug-of-war thing we kept finding ourselves in, I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. The wall he maintained between our hearts was high and thick. Unscalable.

I recognize this now as a giant red flag, but at the time I was accustomed to abuse. That felt normal to me. Because when you have been continually isolated and gaslit, it will seem typical for someone to withhold affection and vulnerability. You will expect to be treated like shit.

I took care with each questions, prolonging them, making them last like one holds a piece of the darkest chocolate on your tongue until it melts. My final query was about the pieces I wanted to write. “How would you feel if I share this story with the world…..” The phone might as well have melted. I’d never seen him respond in such a way.

“MELISSA. You can have my head and my heart or you can be a blogger,” he said, “You don’t get both.”

The phone shook in my hand. I set it down, picked it up, and set it down again. I hadn’t known his head and heart were options. The pulling me close and pushing me away were subtle ways of telling me I meant nothing. The words they spoke told I was only wanted when I could be useful.

It was no contest in my battered heart. I chose him.

I shelved the project and the entirety of my writing. I didn’t know how long it would be. I could feel the words in my blood rising up. They longed to spill out and overwhelm the page and speak to someone. My voice was crying to be heard but my soul longed to be loved. I was taught that people are the most important thing. You choose people over your own desires. So in that moment, it wasn’t a difficult choice. Even though he didn’t choose me back. Even though he’d said, “I don’t know what it means to choose someone.” Even though I’d told him it was okay, I believed one day he’d know how to do it. I chose him with the hope that he’d learn.

Don’t do that. It’s a dangerous game. Don’t diminish your will so someone else can have their way. Don’t choose someone on credit. Choose their now or don’t choose them at all, but don’t choose who they may become.

The next few days were a rush of preparation for a retreat.

I needed to get away. Even in the midst of all the darkness I felt something else tugging at me. Jude and his head and heart were unreliable at best. Having done their part to convince me to give up on sharing the story, their presence in my life was ebbing. And so I retreated. To Vegas.

My relationship with Vegas is an odd one. Some of my most terrible memories occurred in her as did some of my best. I adore her. Beyond her glitter, there is a natural beauty she tries to hide. I love Vegas because I secretly believe we’re kindred hearts. People come for her wildness and excitement and miss out on her early morning sunrises that steal your breath as they crest the mountains. She’s one of the few places louder than me. And even with all she ripped from me; I’ll always find peace in the brilliance of her sunsets. Contemplation and quiet amidst her chaos. Oxygen. Rest.

She and I are wild hearts you won’t easily forget.

I’ve never been very good at contemplation and quiet. Or rest. Or really anything that involves being still for any length of time. I am constantly moving. Stillness gives me a sense of unrest. It feels unsafe. Because of this, I planned to meet up with a couple business colleagues who were also in town. Somehow I thought I could both retreat and work at the same time.

When I told Jude about meeting with a particular man, he said words that will forever be burned into my brain. “Don’t fuck him.” That thought had never entered my mind. Jude was ingrained in my heart. Also, I felt safe. This was a married man who I was friends with. “What are you talking about? I would never do that,” I said.

“Just don’t fuck him, Melissa,” and then he’d paused, “Or do. Whatever.” My heart was confused.

After several cancellations and reschedulings, the man finally asked me to meet him late one evening. I think a lot about why I said yes, why I walked into that room, what I could have done differently.

There aren’t very many actions in my life that I regret. I embrace most things, even the poor choices. I learn and grow from my mistakes but that night I’d erase from my story. If given the chance, I’d take a ripper and unknot it’s thread’s weave from my tapestry. I take all the turpentine ever made and scrub the graffiti from that brick wall until every brick dissolved. But I can’t. Each second is inked upon my soul.

I walked into that room and my life changed.

He was drunk. I once made excuses about that too. Maybe if he hadn’t been drunk. Maybe if I hadn’t agreed to meet him. Maybe if he hadn’t been so damn broken. But you can’t make excuses for someone else’s brokenness. They’re the only ones who can own it. Taking on responsibility for their actions only keeps you trapped in shame’s prison.

I suggested it might be a good idea if I left and we tried to connect the next day. He insisted I stay and give him a hug. He touched my face. His hand stroked my hair. It was all wrong. What ensued next was complicated and ugly and unwarranted. I said, “no” and “please, stop” and it didn’t matter. He didn’t stop. And the entire time I heard those words in my head. The man my heart was trying to love saying, “Don’t fuck him. Or do. Whatever.”

Whatever.

The sun was rising when I pulled back onto the road. I could barely see the streaks of neon painting the sky through my tear swollen eyes. The shame. I thought it would devour the whole of me; start with the tenderness of my heart and work it’s way outwards until I was gone — until there was nothing left but a hint of darkness at the sulfurous path it would leave behind. I didn’t feel deserving of this beautiful sunrise, of any of the fresh grace that comes with a new day. I walked towards my room still fully covered neck to toe in cloth. I even wore socks and boots. Dark leggings masked, not emphasized my legs, and over that a full dress, which was layered under the long sleeve shirt with thumb holes, even half of my hands were covered. Nothing was ripped or torn but my insides. My outsides were as intact as my insides were in shreds.

The weight of what had occurred was a stone in my chest. How could I have allowed this to happen? The minute my door closed, I began stripping off clothes. Tears mingled with ripped plastic as I tore open a bag and shoved them in. I couldn’t bear to have them touching my skin or other clothing.

I could still smell his cologne. Something like baby powder mixed with Axe. Nausea settled in.

Turning on the shower as hot as I could stand, I stepped in. I stood there and cried. And held myself. I could only imagine it was my fault. I knew my words must have caused it. Don’t fuck him, Melissa. I scrubbed my skin and grabbed my toothbrush. Using too much toothpaste, I brushed right there in the shower. I wanted him off of me. The taste and smell and feel of him. I needed him to be gone.

As I curled up in the bed, more clothes and blankets piled on than are necessary for a Vegas spring, I whispered a prayer.

“God, wipe him away. Remove the pieces of him that cling to me. Pick me up and clean me off. Hold me in your arms. I won’t get to the other side unless you help me. Come to my rescue. Even though it already happened, I don’t think it’s too late to save me.”

Later that afternoon, I tried to find solace in a book I had tucked into my bag. I kept re-reading the same passage over and over again unable to move beyond it. The words set fire to my exhausted brain.

“We won’t be like a prisoner, emotional or physical, faltering before the wide-open door of his claustral cell, timid and not at all certain he wants to leave. What will he do without the walls? he asks himself — to commit the same crime, to marry the same person, to take the same train, to find the same job, to write the same book. People who search for change, new beginnings, another kind of life, sometimes imagine they’ll find it all set up and ready for them simply because they’ve changed address, gone to live in some other geography. But a change of address — no matter how far away, how exotic — is nothing more than a “transfer.” And at the first moment they look about them, they see everything they thought to leave behind has arrived with them. Everything. And so, if we have a plan at this early point, it is to invigorate our lives, to re-shape them rather than repeat them.” — Marlena de Blasi “A Thousand Days in Tuscany”

To re-shape them rather than repeat them.

It echoed in my brain. My life had been spiraling for some time now. The previous evening’s events just added to that feeling and something needed to change. The what and how were questions I couldn’t answer yet. I only knew things couldn’t continue as they were.

I couldn’t continue as I was.

I was booked to continue my retreat for two more days but the thought of remaining there in the same city as him was too much.

I packed up my few things and headed back to Phoenix, feeling hollowed out, as though someone had taken one of those giant plastic shovels from the candy store, thrust it inside of my soul, and scooped out all of my insides. Empty. There was no rage. I couldn’t feel pain. There was only an ache so cavernous at the center of my being where I once had dwelled.

Dragging my suitcase into the house, I grabbed the mail. Waiting on top was a large manila envelope. Divorce papers. Finalized and signed by the judge. There wasn’t a single tear left.

And maybe that was rock bottom. Maybe that’s when my soul shattered into a million glittering shards beneath the weight of every grief. Maybe that’s when I finally came to my own end and said, “Enough.” There have been unbearable moments since and others I endured before. But if I could tell the truth about March, which I just did, I would say thank God it was followed by April.

April is when I found the Light.

Coming back to life is hard work.

It is a slow trudge up a steep hill covered in boulders and unexposed bear traps. Walking has always been my way of working through a thing. In April, that’s what I began doing. Every morning at 5:00 a.m. Every afternoon at 5:00 p.m. Days and months of walking and moments when my pain left me doubled over sobbing on the side of that almost dry canal.

Walking was my way out of grief and into living. It was my alternative to uglier things. I walked so I could breathe. It was how I survived on the days that were too dark for me to do anything else. When I couldn’t sit in front of a computer screen or speak to a client or face someone asking how I was; when I couldn’t live, I walked.

At some point, my ribs started poking through. My face became gaunt. My hair started falling out on the left side, because though I was walking several hours a day, I kept forgetting to eat.

I wasn’t sure if it would end.

One day I melted down next to a twisted tree that overhung a desert water spot. Snot and tears poured off my face and into the grey red dust at my feet. I heard a sound and looked up to find a coyote coming out of the brush. I was too wounded to be afraid. I was the wild animal. Feral. Unfit for human company. Loud wails came from my belly. My brain knew it wasn’t appropriate to be yelling in public, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop the wails or tears or the snot. And the coyote wasn’t having it. I was too much work for him.

He turned tail and ran in the opposite direction leaving me bent over, holding myself as the turmoil erupted from the deep. And there it was. All of it. After months of silence, (my walking started in April and this was mid-July) it all lay there on the desert floor before me, in the widening pool of my tears.

“You can’t run from it,” my therapist said. “You have to just sit in it. Just sit and be. Face it. And eventually you’ll be able to give it a left hook. You’ll be able to start fighting it and then you can rise up out of it. But it starts when you stop running from it. It starts when you just sit here in it.”

And she was right. That moment of anguish that scared the poor coyote was me just being in it. Running is the easiest when you want to be done with a thing but it won’t get you where you want to be. Instead you have to stand still. You have to just be. You have to be there. Even though you want to be out of it not just for the sake of being out but also to say, “I overcame.”

To be able to say, “I beat The Thing.” The Thing. That’s what I called the sexual assault for the first couple of months. I couldn’t bear to face the words. But I’m fierce about pursuing healing. I refused to be what the men who broke me were.

It’s cliche to say but cliche for a reason, broken people break people. Once you’ve been broken, you have to take responsibility for your brokenness. Own it. If you don’t, at some point you’ll break someone else. I knew I had “beat The Thing.” And if I was going to do that, I had to actually be in that moment. Be in the crap. Sit in it. Wail into it. Grieve. When I did, it gave me the strength to fight which helped me heal.

You don’t just stumble upon the light. It’s something you pursue. You find what you seek. Fall to pieces, my loves. From the ash, you shall arise and rebuild.

If you appreciated this piece, please click the little green heart below 💚 so someone else will see and read it too. Thank you.

This piece can also be listened to at Soundcloud along with the other two parts: https://soundcloud.com/melissa-hawks-906313350/coming-undone-pt-3

Read Pt. 1: https://medium.com/@MelissaHawks/coming-undone-a-story-in-three-parts-pt-1-a1091c5bfb2c#.em2jedp3y

Read Pt. 2: https://medium.com/@MelissaHawks/coming-undone-a-story-in-three-parts-pt-2-bdd9e53c0463#.vi19i4svs