If you mean to do it, it’s a willful sin and it’s not forgiven, they said
The story of a brainwashed but stubborn woman’s return to herself, with excerpts from her stupid journals. See intro post
The days sure fly by. I can’t believe it will be a year already this July that M and I have been married! It has been a good year — you know people always say that the first year is the hardest, but it really hasn’t been too bad at all.
I think the thing that makes it hard is getting used to living together. It is so much different bring married than just dating.
There are time I wonder what we were thinking.
More importantly, it is good to remember that God has put us together as partners in Faith. We have to help each other through this short life on earth to an eternity in our heavenly home — eternity!
— My stupid journal, 1998
The Fist
It’s what everybody in the church does. Get married, young.
We both regret it. As his fist hits the inside of the windshield this morning before heading to campus it’s an exclamation point on his statement:
“Fuck YOU!”
Slam.
His fist hits glass, which I watch as it becomes an intricate spiderweb of lines and I wonder if it’s bleeding, decide I don’t care as my throat restricts and anger fills me quickly like a test tube until I burst:
“No, fuck you! And you’re paying for that, you piece of shit!”
I don’t remember what the fight was about. We live in a four-plex. “Roomies” now, enrolled in a state college in a small town, where our schedules rarely align for meals or much interaction at all, really. Except for transportation.
I got a KitchenAid mixer for our wedding. I’m 20 and own a KitchenAid. I make pizza dough and cookies and study and draw and run; run so much, to escape. When I run I can put my fear and anger somewhere else. Sometimes college guys flirt with me and I feel like an alien.
My childlike hubby plays Nintendo64 until the wee hours and withdraws cash a lot and is irresponsible.
Like any college student.
Except I’m the “mother” in the situation, now. I get overdraft bank notices and make transfers from savings every week to cover it. I cringe and watch the funds dwindle.
I don’t remember how the windshield gets fixed, but it does.
We both somehow graduate without killing each other, and continue separate lives in the city that only look joined when we go to church together.
The time we do spend together we most often argue.
He doesn’t get a good job, a college-earned job, so he hates me because I did. He hates me because I show him how insecure he is. He hates me because I tell him the things I don’t like about our marriage, like:
He doesn’t care about me/ spends money we don’t have /doesn’t try to get a better job/smokes/never cleans/spends most nights on the blue recliner/plays video games a lot/is mean to my family/is mean to his family/lies about money.
We really hate each other.
I know I hate him. I think he hates himself.
We try counseling. The therapist declares us both depressed. I start Zoloft because I can’t sleep and everything is doomed.
And we stay together because we’re afraid to burn in hell if we get a divorce. Our church friends tell us we have to work things out. There is no option. It’s not approved by God, to divorce. That “willful sins aren’t forgiven.”
We don’t leave church together one summer weekend, we’d been fighting pretty hard all week. I drive home on the freeway, no AC in that old car, windows open, hot tears flying across my face and enter a cloverleaf a little too fast and think:
“Please, God. Take one of us. I can’t do this anymore.”
June, 2007
9 years and 11 months after we get married, he sits with his head in his hands on the recliner and tells me he doesn’t love me and thinks we both deserve to be with people that love us and he wants to get a divorce.
All of it flashes in an instant: the door slams, reckless angry driving, yelling, pouting, lonely nights, careless money spent and I nod.
“I agree.”
I’m willing to go to hell for this decision. I file the paperwork, he signs it. He wants some more of my money. I get angry one last time, declare him a bastard and begin my single life with a new skip in my step.
I decide that God is giving me a free pass, because I don’t feel like a sinner.
The feeling I have in my heart is of love and forgiveness, and that’s when I decide that God doesn’t give a damn about divorce or rules or give anyone a punishment, ever.
God is love.
Stay tuned, as the fear of “losing my faith” and going to hell won out and brought me into another living hell. Oopsie.
