Our Marriage

When I think of you, my heart breaks. Our marriage has become something to survive, something to be endured with gritted teeth. There is no peace here anymore. Is there love? Yes. Love still survives here, like a stubborn flame that won’t go out. I pour water on it, curse it, and beg that flame to just leave me alone to grow cold. But still it flickers, at times it grows into a raging fire. It devours me like a dry timber forest, the flames licking up the sides of my heart, consuming me in violence. You pour gasoline on that flame. You stoke its embers, you call me to remember our love. You are fanning those flames and begging me not to let the fire die. My tears just aren’t enough to kill this. No matter how much water I pour on those flames; it flickers, it shines, it lights. Our marriage is a slavery that I contracted for. I am your servant, you are my master. Even behind those bars you are in my every step, behind my every thought. Your presence never leaves me. That flame just won’t stop burning. Please, I am afraid. I am scared of this fire. It will consume me if you leave again. I won’t survive. There is no safe escape, only the burning, burning, burning of our love.

A Tale of PTSD, Faith, and Renewal

Every so often I get the breath knocked from out of me. My lungs constrict and trap air like iron fists. I can feel my stomach turning, my heart racing, and my hands sweating. My legs start to shake, like my bones are quivering from the pain. It can be as simple as a photograph of an abandoned building that some lost soul has made their dirty home. It could be a song, a smell, a phrase or touch that feels too familiar. All of a sudden I am a quivering shaking fool. All of a sudden my guts feel like they are being ripped out from inside of me.

It can be a terrible thing, to remember.

Perhaps that is why I tried so hard to cut my past out of the tapestry of my life like a cancer. It is making me sick, I scream, as my hands tear the past to shreds. Stop following me! Stop forcing your way back into the present! The past ghosts and terrorizing memories laugh quietly at my absurd outbursts. They go into hiding, but they always come back. They always knock the breath out of me when I am least suspecting.

It may be time for a new way of dealing with this.

With this gap between what used to be and what now is. This huge hole that I have dug between my history and my present, afraid that my history may infect my future if it is allowed out of its quarantine. I lay awake at night with eyes wide open, and terror gripping my heart. What if it happens again? I can hardly even dare ask the question, barely whisper it to myself alone in the dark at night. What if all that pain and addiction and despair and loathing comes back? My husband will be a widower, my children will be orphans. I violently shake the thoughts out my head. No, I insist, that is an impossibility. I would never allow it; a fate worse than death.

But my past hunts me like a wild animal, and I cower in fear.

I throw my hands up in exasperation. But what I can do? I wail to myself. I cannot allow that old me to come back again to destroy everything I have worked for. I cannot possibly survive if I allow myself to feel the pain of those years. I would never stop crying. I would go mad. I would drown in a thousand tears.

Is it true? Would I never survive it?

Even now my chest is tightening and am fighting back those bastard tears.

Could I ever survive the memory of being held down and torn into and broken inside? Could I ever handle the enormity of that pain? Can I look at that broken and lost teenager I was, sleeping outside on top of cardboard boxes, bartering her body away after it had been taken from her? Can I remember what it felt like to dig crooked needles into my arms? The blood and water sprayed on the walls, down my clothing, heart pounding, eyes wide?

Can I ever survive the memories of dirty mattresses on the floor? Of skinny children begging for food in the project halls? Of the men, oh the many men, who grabbed and stole and took and broke me in until I was nothing but a hallow shell of a girl, filling myself with drugs to numb the pain?

What about when I realized that I was addicted? What about when I realized that I couldn’t stop? What about when I dragged razor blades across my arms and went mad because of the unrelenting suffering of it all? The despair of utter hopelessness and disdain for my life? The hatred that I felt after allowing them to abuse me, over and over again.

The confusing whirlwind of emotions that the doctors tried to drug into oblivion and lock me away for? It never worked, their drugs. I never believed that they could understand or help me. They never did.

How could it have become normal to sleep in crack houses and sidewalks? How could it become normal to treat my body like a dollar bill? How could it ever have been acceptable to hurt myself the way I did? I don’t understand how it got that bad, and I didn’t know it was that bad until I had escaped it.

Escape? Or was it more like a beautiful liberation?

Standing between two godly men, they lowered me into the waters of baptism and I declared my faith. In a faith that saved me. In a God who was able to rescue a dying girl like me. Faith that binds the broken and sets the captives free; leaping like gazelles. A birth just as real as when I came wet and screaming from my mother. A new beginning that will never end. A love from a Father who will never leave me. Forgiveness that makes what was red like blood and filthy, white as the purest of snow.

He who reached out to me and said, “Go, and sin no more. Your sins are forgiven.”

Those who have been forgiven much, love much, the Savior says. It is true. Truth that can never be destroyed; even by a thousand lies.

But how do I cope with the old me? How do I endure these crippling memories?

Maybe I need to bridge that hole that I dug. Maybe I need to embrace my history, with all its hurt and suffering and filthiness. Maybe I need to accept who I was in order to fully understand who I am today. I do not have to be that person again, but she did exist. I need to allow her to have existed. I need to allow her history to flow into my present and future, as new. She was, and she felt, and she endured, and she survived and she was reborn into this fresh new creature in faith and truth and love.

She was redeemed, cleansed, forgiven. I need to forgive her too. She needs space in my life, my emotions, because these memories will not go away. I cannot run forever.

I can stare my past in the face with all its ugliness and say “I survived you” or I can run and hide and wait for it to attack me again.

I think I may start standing up and facing what once was, so that I can keep going forward without being terrified of the past.

I feel like a wound

Im feeling like a fresh wound today. Words like mercy and forgiveness are stinging me like salt. The tears well up inside my chest, i can feel the pressure. Last night I held my precious baby girl in my arms. I looked at her smiling, her chubby sweet cheeks. She was born in my favorite season, Autumn; a crisp November day this year. But then suddenly I felt memories rush forth like a flood. A few years ago this wound was ripped open when I learned of his death.

John. A decade my senior, a fast intense and dangerous love. I met him one night with Jen. The three of us, loud and hysterical on the train to New York City. We ran through the streets as fast as possible before the winter wind could freeze us to the bone. We were all dressed in skimpy black leather and vinyl.

The first night was mostly between Jen and me. We kissed and danced and walked bleary-eyed through the smoked filled club. We laughed with strange men who wanted to take us home.

The sun rose and the three of us were coming down. We stumbled through Penn station, Jen and I laughing at our haggard faces in the bathroom mirrors.

Ecstasy was constantly bursting pleasure through our brains. We touched each other in bed, talked about how we never felt such love. Was it love? Was it the drugs? Both?

Then, things started to change. John and I went deeper. He told me he was addicted to pain killers, lost his job, lost his family. I remember saying to him, “man, if you loved oxy you will love heroin. And if you love heroin, you will love shooting up.”

And then time gets fuzy, nothing makes sense. I remember it being new years eve, Jen and I were together. A phone call was made, hushed voices, I snuck out her window into his truck.

Jen and I fought. I lied to him, swore we never slept together. He said he would leave me if I did.

I remember kneeling in front of him, sticking a needle in his vein (this wont hurt..ready..one two three..ahhhh) . I remember pupils dilating and long dark nights. I remember him loving crack from the first hit. I convinced to him to try it, I wont forgive myself.

I laid in his bed. Nodded out at his family’s table. His parents looked at me with suspicion and fear.

Then, we’re in a big white van, we laughed calling it our home. But it wasnt really funny.

We rode from Newark and back a million times. I shoved a thousand dollars worth of heroin and crack in my bra, running away from angry dealers.

I didnt care. We didnt care.

The fighting started. Then the paranoia. I remember him putting crack inside a bag and hiding it inside the toilet. The cops are coming, the cops are coming.

We sat for hours, all night long, picking eachother’s faces and back. When I went to rehab I had sores all over my face from the constant picking.

We only bathed once, together in the motel bathroom. The bathwater was warm, but he was distant, so far away from me. Things werent the same anymore.

Another run to the dealer. A knife is held to my throat. I swear he’s not a cop, they said my live depended on it. They dont trust white guys.

He calls the bank, just one more loan. He is reaching 30,000 dollars in debt, and its only been three weeks.

I cant stop puking from the drugs. I carry plastic bags with me everywhere, adjusting to the sickness I feel. I cant eat, my pants are falling off my juted hips. I’m started to get used to never eating and always throwing up.

I hand him the crack stem on our way back from Newark. He takes a hit while we drive down the highway, we cant wait.

I think Im dying, actually I am. I dial 911 but never press the button. Later John told me that I was numb, I couldnt move my arms, my heart was beating through my chest.

I remember taking bear aspirin, “my anti-heart attack drug” I joked. Later I find out, it may have actually saved my life.

He cant leave me. He cant just die. Life was so close to the edge, we almost died together. You cant leave me. Dont die, please dont go.

The money was running low. We had almost nothing left. I couldnt take it, neither could he. We laid in bed, trying to detox from the 20 bags of dope we shot into our veins every day. But we couldnt do it, so we hopped in the van and drove to Newark in a heavy silence.

When we get there, Im too sick to walk into the projects. John asks our dealer if he will come to the car “are your legs broken?” he asks. This was John’s first run without me.

He comes back in. We spend a night in our van outside a hotel in their parking lot. There are vials everywhere. This is a strong one, we double up the hits and nearly pass out.

We cant stop. I cant stop.

I find myself wishing I would get arrested. Please, save me from myself. I cant it alone.

Finally the money runs out, our fights are more intense and heart-breaking. I cant even sip water anymore without thowing up. Im very sick, so very sick.

I call my Mother. I think its night but its actually morning. She knows it bad, really bad. She wants to save me but I wont let her. I hang up.

Later on I end up in rehab, John ends up in jail.

The last time I ever saw him he came to pick me up, I was fresh out of detox and feeling like I might just beat this thing. He was so sick. He lost weight, he didnt look like the John I met all those months ago. Back when it was the three of us. Back when we laid in bed and tried to make a polyamous relationship work. Back when we thought we were in control.

I look at him and I remember how it all started. How we thought it was fun. How we laid in bed listening to VAST take us away with her music. We swore we would only use together, but then we were never apart. Then we swore we would only use twice a week, but the days ran into each other.

Then he got a phone call, I hear a female voice on the line. He hangs us and tells me it was a man when i question him. I say, “really? sure sounded like a woman to me.” He drops me off at home.

Later on, about a week later. I am at home, lost in big house that I shared with my mom and step-father. I feel like I want to kill myself. I feel like I can never escape, like Im gonna die this way and nothing can stop it.

So I call him up. He is supposed to come over and get me high after picking it up in Newark. But he doesnt show up. I wait and wait. My heart is pounding, Im anxious and I want to get high.

He got arrested. He goes away for over a year, part of it in rehab. And I move away, I run away. I think moving to the desert across the country will help but it doesnt.

One day I ask him for forgiveness, he says he doesnt blame me.

And then I get a text message from Jen that breaks open a wound that wont close.

John is dead. They found his body on a sidewalk in Camden.