ag.o.ny (ag'uh-nee): extreme and generally prolonged pain; intense physical or mental suffering.
And that's what happens when I take my eyes off the center line. It's like a bunch of mini panic attacks, but they're quiet and deep inside me, not always visible to anyone else.
Except when they leak out through the cracks in my soul. Like the other night, I had to leave work because I could not function. I could not even get it together enough to be embarrassed by it, the onslaught of continual tears. I simply could not stop. The kind people I work with called in a replacement and sent me home with a hug, dumbfounded by their formerly funloving, enthusiastic co-worker coming undone.
Yes, a byproduct of physical exhaustion as well, but truly, I've been slowly coming undone all of my life, really, and I just cannot fake it well any longer. (could there BE any more commas in that sentence?)
The Husband has left it up to me whether to leave. He has given up the fight, no longer caring enough to chase me down, for those of you that remember how I tested old boyfriends.
I won't leave. I love him. Dammit, I don't know how I feel about that. Part of me is proud that I love him, he's my husband and a wonderful kind thoughtful person. The other part feels like a jackass, because he doesn't love me back and has loved another in the interim. He is here because it's the 'right thing to do' and our children are happy, and he's praying that God will change his heart toward me (made ever so difficult by my fcuking insanity -truly- at the end of the suck job that was 2006), and he's been praying to love me again long before the affair happened. Unbeknownst to me until post-affair.
It begs the question: how much more like sh!t can one possibly feel? It makes me nauseated if I dwell upon these things, and the little Cuisinarts take up residence in my chest, set on grind or puree. I start to crack open, and while some of that is good, and needed, it also is frightening. Because I don't have six months to weep in a rubber room, I still have to function in the world, work at a high-stress job, interact with my children in a healthy way, and figure out how to truly communicate with The Husband with limited interaction time.
For the last year, I have been concerned that if I started to open up my soul, that the wounds exposed would take me out. And, after the River of Tears on Thursday night, it's not an unreasonable concern. I am a weary little soldier.
And yet.
There is still hope in this most hopeless situation. I have no freaking idea why, but there is. It bursts over me, like a break in the clouds, way too infrequently, but unmistakable when it happens. I was in a parking lot yesterday walking toward my car, and BAM! There is was. A long-term vision of hope, in a microsecond of the virtual clouds parting. Hard to explain, but I smiled from the inside out for that moment. And it gave me enough to to hold onto through the next few hours. Manna for the day. Not when I look to The Husband, because my heart just disintegrates when I focus on him. But when I keep my hands on the wheel, on God, and his Word, I have so much crazy peace.
Which is why I know it's hard for me to spend time with Him each day, because the enemy has had me for so long. He is putting on a serious fight to not give me up. My family has been in his clutches for generations, and I am like the little bon-bon he's been waiting to pop in his mouth for dessert. So how DARE I go and find God, and then try to break out of destructive habits. Well, fcuk him. And the horse he rode in on. I will NOT live another year of my life this way. Ultimately, this is not about my marriage (although it does feel that way most days). It's about my life and my legacy to my kids.
I know God said there would be suffering, and He doesn't guarantee happiness. The Husband likes to hang his hat on that lately, but I think God wants our marriages to be a testimony to His glory. Not everyone's is, obviously, but I'm willing to let Him rock the happiness factor. I've been a sh!tty wife at times, he's been a sh!tty husband at times. I'm going to throw my hat in the ring, even if The Husband cannot right now. It's yank up the bootstraps time. One of those I believe! Help my unbelief! kind of times.
