Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Epiphany

The other day I had a bit of a breakthrough moment. Something that helped free me from the crippling guilt I've had for almost the last year.

The other night I was talking to Husband about a major harm that happened to me when we were new in our dating relationship. We'll call this November. I won't go into what happened, but it damaged me in a very deep and troubling way for many many years, and he had a hand it the occurrence of November. For some reason, after November happened, I couldn't bring myself to give him any responsibility. For years I made excuses, yet I knew deep down inside that he should have protected me, stood up for me, had my back. He should have known that he was suppose to have spared me from this hurt. Instead he delivered the hurt to me, and it broke apart my insides in a way I didn't know how to heal.

So I asked him the other night if he thought that November and my refusal to assign him responsibility, had something to do with the wall I had up around me that kept us a part. That made it easier for me to go down the path of Scarlet.

His response was that he thought I needed to also give him some responsibility for "The Accident" or rather...the affair. He said that he didn't love me like he should have. He also told me about how the two times in our marriage I almost left him, were both times that his heart wasn't with me. Both instances happened when his heart was filled with lustful thoughts for people other than me.

I began crying. It was true, he did have a little bit to do with what happened. I'd had these small thoughts in my head but pushed them away because I didn't want to give myself any sort of "excuse" or reason. But it was true. I knew he didn't love me like he used to. Before it all came down, before I became the adulterer, I'd tell him I wasn't even a blip on his radar.

And I also felt like he never took care of me. Every time it mattered, he failed me. He left me out alone to do everything by myself. I was tired and sad and hurt. I felt very abandoned by him.

He gave me permission to feel like I didn't hold ALL the blame. He said that although I was driving the car, he played part in giving me a car with crappy brakes and having me drive in stormy conditions. But I still decided to drive, and I didn't pull over and weight out the storm. I kept driving and my brakes failed and I crashed and almost died. But I didn't die, and my life is full of love and joy right now.

Realizing that is was ok to not hold all the blame on me freed me, it took away the horrible self loathing I've felt so strongly these months. I still hold the blame, but its ok. He can share it with me, and its not so bad. Its not bad at all.

I told him how in the beginning of us, the moment that started us toward marriage, was when I was crying over my dead love and he put his arms around me. In the moment the sadness and fear melted. I didn't feel like I couldn't breath anymore. He gave me comfort and made me feel safe. It turned out that, until our "accident", that was the one and only time I felt that from him.

He muses that when his arms went around me that was God coming through him. I think I buy that. But I also wonder if, in those moments, our true selves touched each other and saw something. They recognized each other and rejoiced. We would have been good, we would have fallen in love had November not happened.

But November did happen. Something evil came and took away my heart. I walled myself up and was made hard. From that time on our souls were lost to each other, and really, lost to ourselves.

And now we are free from that. We both feel really free. A sin occurred, but it didn't break us like it could have. Instead we got help and our Therapist somehow helped our souls find each other.

Or perhaps it was the true me that found us when I tore that wall down when I said to him I wanted so badly to love him.

I could muse on this forever. But I won't. :) I cried happily and felt at once free. We embraced in the dark room, moonlight spilling through the windows, the palms rustling in the wind, and made love. Cheesy, I know. But still, it was a nice moment.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Changing My Name

Currently I'm am Peering into Darkness... but I think I should change that. Because it goes back to that big guilt I have that I've been fighting with.

Today I saw my therapist and he brought me back from the guilt and self flagellation I've been experiencing. I told him about what I wrote yesterday, about the guilt for the Other I felt. He told me that I was being very self exalted in my assessment that I had such power over a life and that I was holding myself up as a God in his life. That the Other had been in tatters before I met him and was in tatters when I left and would continue making choices in his life that left him in tatters, all while God did things to try to get his attention.

It struck a cord with me. He is NOT my responsibility, he is God's responsibility. And I could not fix him, he was broken before and my presence in his life could not have fixed him and after I left him - there is truly no way to fix him. And I don't think I want to fix him, because it isn't my job. I think I was freed a little bit today after seeing that. I hope it sticks. My Therapist would say that "hope" comment is me doubting and the doubts are tools of the enemy (meaning evil, sin, devil, what have you).

He also talked about how I am still wrestling with The Flesh. Trying to control it and now veer off of the tree of Good and Evil when I need to put it in God and live with him and in the Tree of Life. I know this, I know that I have not let myself be forgiven and that I have not accepted that I can be forgiven by God. I know I am in my head, but my heart does not.

I started this blog as a way to confront what I did, I do think its about time for me to own it and to acknowledge it more. I have hidden in shame for what I did, have been afraid of being discovered, but I seek to get past it so if it is known it will not cause me any trouble. It will be easy for me to say, "oh, that wasn't me. I am not that person, I was really never that person". She was someone who took me over for a time, but I fought free of her. I did, I did in that moment when I ignored what she thought she really wanted and said what I deep down knew was the right thing.

That may be confusing so I'll explain briefly. We were in the moment when my husband asked me what I wanted. In that moment I knew I wanted to run away with the Other, I wanted to live with him and be happy. But I knew in my head that wasn't Truth. The Truth, the holy Truth was that I wanted to love my husband and he would stay with me. So I told him, in a perfect world I would be in love with him.

God granted me that wish. Husband wanted to wait a month to decide if he could live with me, but he saw something in my face, he saw God in me for a moment and he felt God touch him and push him toward me and our spirits became married.

Do not think I'm this rampaging christian with Jesus fever. I am a woman with a strong faith in God and his ability to move things in my life. I can only say how this came to be, and that is the best way I can describe it. I don't know how to make it more clear than say, in the moment when I answered from Truth my eyes were clear and I saw my husband for the first time. Saw him the way I wanted to always see him. And he saw me back and took me as I was.

In many ways he saved me. Saved me. I could have been destroyed and miserable. I always knew, in spite of my actions, that if this came down and I lost my Husband it would be the biggest mistake of my life. I would live in regret. I knew that.

I knew a lot of things I can't explain. When things started happening with the Other I told him that I somehow felt like he was going to be a tool to get me over my dead love (my first love) and help me to love my husband. I knew this somehow. I thought I knew it from God, but I'm not sure. I can't think for a moment God wanted me to commit such an act of betrayal, I don't know if it was the Evil One tricking me and God just took over the situation. I guess I have to read Screwtape Follies to really figure that out.

But for now, I just guess maybe I somehow glimpsed the future-independent of God and the Devil. I will choose not to assign the strangeness to anything and just accept that God took the horrible event and made it into a happy accident.

So I will change to something a little more uplifting, because I will be free of this. Freedom and Redemption!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Adultery

There, I said it. I committed adultery. I was unfaithful. If you haven't figured this out yet, that is what the Scarlet A is for.

For much of this time after the mark was discovered I have kept my wall up around myself so I don't have to acknowledge my sin. I don't know how to understand it. It was so unlike me. So opposite of who I am. I had never so much as broken a heart, and suddenly I'm nearly destroying whole lives, potentially destroyed one for certain, though not mine nor my husband's.

I am so sorry for the thing I did. Sorry to everyone. I will probably go into "the Other" and how he came into my life at some point. But not now. But he does play a role in my inability to let go because I feel such tremendous guilt and responsibility for causing the harm. Harm that cannot be fixed. This is hard on Husband, who I'm sure thinks it is unfair since he is the true victim in all of this. But I feel they were both victims of my treachery and that I was the villain in all of this.

In regards to the "Other", I feel like I led a starving soul into a place unnatural to him with a crumb of bread and a promise for something he was desperately hungry for. Evil. I was like the White Witch with the Turkish Delights. Husband had no idea about what was going on and I tried my best to pretend there was nothing going on. That I lived two different lives. But I felt like I was living outside my body, and that I went through daily life forcefully-only by willing myself to exist in my life.

It was hard for me. I loved my children, but I did not live here anymore. I lived in my head and I wanted so much to be "in love", to fulfill love. To finally live and be with someone I loved.

I guess I should point out that I married my husband out of mutual interest and companionship. That I never fell in love with him (although I am blessed enough to be able to say that I am finally in love with him). There was a person I loved, someone who left me-died. After his death I just gave up, I would never love again. But I wanted a family and I wanted to be with my dearest friend, so we got married. It seems terribly unfair, doesn't it? He sort of ambushed me, asked me to marry him very early in our dating relationship and I didn't know what to say. Couldn't say no. Maybe didn't want to.

Of course I never did tell him this. He never had any idea about this until he discovered the mark upon me. Then it all spilled out in great heaving gasps of unwanted and unsuspected truth. Truth I had never meant for him to know.

When I think to that moment, I feel such sadness for the pain I caused him in those revelations. I count my blessing he has remained with me and loves me even more than before. Just last night he danced with me and said "I love you, and you are forgiven." He says this to me with a loving smile on his lips. He knows I haven't forgiven, yet he has, and he wants me to move past this. I am a blessed woman. I don't deserve it. But my therepist would say that is what Grace is all about. And the longer I hold this, the longer I give it power over us.

This is all for tonight.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Why am I doing this?

Hello. I am Scarlet, I am married, I have two small children and I committed a terrible crime against my husband. Let me first say that he is aware and in his infinite goodness he has forgiven me. Truly and wholly. The problem is, I have not forgiven me. I don't know how to.


I think perhaps being forced to write what happened, have to look it in the eye will help me find a way to come to terms. Because I have to move past this. My husband is free from it, but as long as it keeps a strangle hold on me, we will never be fully free of the mark.

I carry the mark inside my head and on my heart and in my soul. The mark makes me want to rake my face with sharpened nails, draw blood, pull a steel blade across my arm, poke out my eyes. The thoughts come, wash over me and all I can do is pray.


I need to figure this out. I need to put this in the past and move forward. I need to stop being afraid.

I will explore here what happened, what is happening and what may happen. If ever anyone reads this, I welcome your comments. Your scorn is not welcome, I have enough of it in my own head. But if you are a wounded soul, if you have wounded others, feel free to come here and process with me. If you somehow figure out who I am in real life, I ask you to please keep it to yourself.

This scarlet letter is a destroyer in many ways, but for me it was a creator. Not it in itself, but it opened a door on an ugliness that needed confronting. I was made naked before God and my husband and in the moment I was my most naked, I whispered the words that mattered most.

From my lips to God's ears, my prayer was answered in that moment and my life was saved. My present and future was saved. But my past haunts me and I must find the way to make peace. To vanquish it, because I cannot settle with co-existence. I cannot live with the horror of my dark deed.


Therefore I must peer into my darkness and see what I find there. Only then will I find my freedom.

I also hope that perhaps someone who has found themselves in this situation, or finds themselves moving in the direction, might take some comfort from me. If I could help one person... I haven't fully decided if I should go comment as Scarlet or not. To bring readers in. But a big part of me says that I have something to offer to readers-something that might help them. Since this all happened I feel compelled to tell people, women especially, that there IS hope. There is a way! Life can be full of joy!

So that is me, take me as I am.