Divinely Enough

Chapter One: Decide to Decide”

My Story: Finding My Worth

I decided to pack.

I got a huge cardboard box, secured the bottom with packing tape, and filled it with some sweaters, sheets, and towels. Soon, the living room was stacked with different sized boxes, some with writing on the sides to display its prior contents: Kellogs, Dixie, and Tropicana. They were piled in corners and stuffed to the rim with pots, curtains, old papers, toys, and baby clothes. Each box was distinct in size and with different demarcations—kitchenware was scribbled on an angle on one, another read bedroom stuff, while yet another had winter clothes scrawled in black marker across the back.

Combined, the boxes symbolized the end to my 10 year marriage. I didn’t want to accept it at the time. I told myself and my then husband that we needed a break; that I was taking the baby (and all our things, mind you) to Virginia to sort things out. I lied to myself and to him and said that I’d be back in six months, though I had sold the house, packed my things, and didn’t really care where he was going to live. I needed to breathe; I needed to be whole again; I needed to get out of a toxic situation that had sucked everything I had to give. I was emotionally drained, mentally tired, and in survival of the fittest mode where I had to flee or spiritually and mentally die.

It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make, especially with a daughter who was barely two, still waddling around in diapers that sagged off her bottom. But it was a decision that had to be made because the relationship with my husband had soured to the point that it threatened to damage my health and well being. I had to leave, escape, and find a safe place to run. For me, packing brought clarity and purpose. It pointed to a direction on my mental compass. Each box brought confirmation that I was doing the right thing and gave me a reason to move toward something better and new.

I can’t tell you specifically when my marriage started to decay, but the stench became unbearable when he moved into the back room and stopped talking to me. Before this, we had gone through the motions, pretended that everything would be alright, went to a get-your-marriage-back-on-track retreat, talked about what we could do to fix it, worked on it for a few days and then went back to business as usual –until I looked around one day and the relationship was as lifeless and useless as a corpse. He refused marital counseling, and I got tired of begging him to go with me. The last blow up that we had was over his mother staying with us. It was one of those “my mom is coming just for the weekend” turned into a long vacation turned into “so, when is she leaving?” type of situations. When I posed the forbidden question to her, she referred me to him. “Why don’t you ask my son?” If her son was home long enough and came home a decent hour, then maybe I would. When I caught up to him, he became indignant. “How dare I ask him that?” was his retort.

His rhetorical question left me stunned because the house from my childhood was in my name. Last time I checked, I was paying half the mortgage. So, I think I had earned the right to ask the question. Besides, wasn’t I still his wife? In this situation, I felt powerless and threatened to call the cops to have her removed. As drama would have it, the Oscar winning scene ended with me calling the cops, them coming over and telling me that I could not have her removed because she was his guest and he, of course, was my husband. After she told me how Satanic I was acting and how many demons had possessed my soul, she eventually left. He retaliated by moving into the back room, giving me the expected despised looks, and punished me with the unending silent treatment which made me feel like an exile in my own home. He would come home, speak to the baby sitting in my lap, and not look at or speak to me.

I’m not sure who was right or wrong in the last situation, by this time I had lost count. What I did know is that we were parents, supposedly God-fearing people, and we had both made this now meaningless sacred vow. I talked, pleaded, and cajoled him, but by this time his heart was hardened and his mind was made up about how things between us had to be. From his place of hurt, I deserved my punishment which now had lasted almost six months. At the time, part of me believed he deserved to treat me like an unclean leper as guilt had settled in and remorse had taken its toll on my psyche for my part in the decay.