My mom says, “Oh, honey, that takes me back. You’ve loved the sound of the ocean since you were three. When we’d get close to the beach, you’d kick your feet against your car seat and squeal and we’d laugh and laugh. Then the second we got you to the sand, you’d take off toward the sea. Sand and water have always been home to you.”
As she speaks, the tears come and they feel cleansing, like an organic baptism. There it is, something I’ve loved since I was three and will still love when I am eighty-three. Here I am, on a bed in a hotel room all by myself, meeting my self. I’ve learned one true thing about me. Maybe there is more to learn. Hello, soul. I am learning what you love. I will get more of this for us. I promise. I have met my self and I am going to care for her fiercely. At least as fiercely as I care for everyone else in my life. I will not abandon, ignore, or lose myself again.
I snuggle under the covers with more hot tea and start flipping through the channels, fast because of my low threshold for anything emotional. I settle on a home-improvement channel and start following the story of a couple who buys a fixer-upper sight unseen. After they move in, the nightmare begins. There have been leaks, water damage, and electrical fires. The couple is patching up problems one after another and they look haggard and afraid and their savings are close to gone. They seem to be running out of patience with their home, their life, and each other. They finally sit down with a contractor who says, “Your problem is that everything in this house is wired wrong. These walls look fine but there’s a nightmare underneath. I recommend that you tear down the walls and rewire the entire house, or sell it and move on. Either fix the problems once and for all or leave it to be someone else’s problem.” The wife’s face falls. She looks around at the walls she’s painted so carefully and hung her family pictures on so lovingly. She is having a hard time accepting that inside her perfectly decorated walls hide problems dangerous enough to destroy her whole house. I understand.
She says, “I’m done with this place. Let’s get out of here and start over. Let’s buy a new house.”
Her husband pauses and says, “But how will we know that the next house won’t have the same problems? At least we know what we’ve got with this one. Once we tear it all up, we’ll be able to see what’s behind the walls. We can begin again, with experts this time. We can make it right. Make it our own. Let’s stay.” I watch the wife’s face and she looks so tired. I fall asleep before learning what the couple decides to do.
The next morning I wake up to the sound of the surf again and I smile. I smile there in bed, alone. I notice right away that this feels like a new kind of smile. I’m not smiling because I am acting or because I have to, but because my soul recognizes something it loves. I am not paralyzed this morning. I know what to do with myself because I know one true thing about me. I climb out of bed, brush my teeth, and make my coffee. I walk back down to my spot on the beach and set up my blanket again. It’s early morning, six o’clock, and everything here looks different and the same. Little birds run back and forth in zigzags, flirting with the surf. Pelicans swoop down, snatching breakfast out of the water. The air off the Gulf is cool on my skin while light slowly fills my beach snow globe. I am alone on the beach, and it feels decadent to be the only one witnessing all this beauty. It feels almost wasteful. I remind myself that it’s not wasted, it’s just all for me. I’m so grateful that I’m here to accept this gift.
I sit down in the sand and think about the couple on the television last night. I ask myself, What if Craig and I are like that house? What if our wiring is bad? I know I can’t stay in my marriage, stare at the nicely decorated walls, and pretend all is well underneath. But if I leave, will I take my bad wiring with me? What if I need to tear down my walls and rewire? Is that what Craig’s doing in therapy? Rewiring himself? I don’t know. I don’t know if Craig will be able to rewire himself, but it strikes me that if I don’t fix my wiring, it won’t matter what house I move into. I’ll burn them all down. Sitting there, on the beach, watching the tide roll in and out, I understand that I’ve been hanging pictures on my walls hoping that’d be good enough.
“We can begin again,” the husband had said. “We can tear down the walls and make it right.” He wanted to move backward so they could move forward. I thought about how adamantly I’d been refusing to look backward. How certain I was that progress meant to move forward. To continue becoming. But what if I had to go backward first? What if progress meant unbecoming?
I don’t know how to fix my marriage. All I know is that I need to tear down my own walls and face what’s underneath. I cannot save my marriage but I can save myself. I can do that for me and for my children and for every relationship I have now and for every one that comes in the future. I can do that so when I make the most important decision of my life, whether to stay with Craig or to leave him, I’ll know that it’s my strongest, healthiest self doing the deciding. I look out at the sea, up at the sky, and down at the sand. I think, I can be brave enough to tear myself down—because the One holding all of this together will hold me, too.
When I get back to my hotel room I sit down at a little desk, pull out a piece of paper, and write another list:
1. Start therapy—examine my wiring before I move.
2. Come to sunset three times a week.
3. Wait one year to make any more decisions.
PART THREE
11
I STOP IN THE BATHROOM to check the mirror before entering the therapist’s waiting room. My costume for this appointment consists of a blazer, suit pants, and heels. I look at myself and wish I’d chosen something else. I’ve lost weight and my pants hang off of me like I’m a two-dimensional cardboard cutout. My blazer swallows me and hides my hands, while the cuffs of my pants drag on the floor, covering my shoes. I do not look professional; I look like a child trying to look professional. I lean in to examine my face more closely. My cheeks are hollow, my eyes are dull, and the gray of my skin shows through my makeup. And my hair. Oh, God, my hair. I reach up to touch it, to prove to myself once again that my Rapunzel hair is really gone. It is. Still gone.
Weeks ago, I became obsessed with cutting off my hair. The night before my appointment, I e-mailed my friend Rachel to tell her my plan. She wrote back and joked, “I see! You’re trying to save your marriage by becoming less attractive? Excellent plan!”
I’d written back:
For God’s sake. I am not trying to become less attractive. I am trying to look more like myself. Why do we all have the same hair, Rachel? Who decided that to be attractive we needed this Barbie hair? Who decided we need to be attractive? I don’t even know what I’m spending all my time and money trying to attract. I’ve been altering myself for so long to match whatever “look” is deemed hottest at the moment that I don’t even know what I actually look like anymore. I am trying to figure out who I am under here. And by the way, I am not trying to save my marriage. My marriage was bullshit. I will either have a new marriage or no marriage—those are the only options. And this haircut isn’t about anybody else anyway; it’s about me. I’m like Thoreau. I’m trying to strip myself down to my barest essentials so I can figure out where I begin and where the woman the world told me to be begins. I’m going back to the starting line. I want to unlearn all the stuff that made me sick and angry. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and discover that I never even knew myself.
Twenty minutes later Rachel replied: “Okaaaaay, well, I sure as hell hope you don’t tell your poor hairdresser all that. That’s a lot of freaking pressure. Cut my hair like Thoreau! Jeez. You okay, Glennon?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. I don’t know.
The next morning, I walked into the hair salon, sat down in my stylist’s chair, and said, “Cut it all off, I want it short. Close to my head, please.”
Kathleen’s response was visceral. She put down her scissors and nearly yelled, “No! What? Why? Your hair is so pretty! We worked so hard to get it like this! Other women would kill
for your hair! Is this about Craig?”
“No. I don’t know. I think this is about me. I just … I just need to see myself.” Kathleen softened.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll do it. Should we look at a magazine to get some ideas for the cut?”
“No,” I said a little too loudly. “No. I don’t want to look like someone else. Just, whatever you think. I trust you. Just take it off.”
“Okay,” she said. She started cutting, and for twenty minutes we watched the waist-length hair I’d cherished like it was the only currency I had to spend drop to the floor. As I saw it fall away, no longer a part of me, I felt terrified and free. I didn’t want to be Rapunzel anymore. I didn’t want anybody climbing my hair to get to me any longer. When Kathleen finished, I stared at myself and felt fascinated and horrified. My first thought: I am no longer pretty. And then: Maybe that’s okay. I have other things to try to be. Kathleen stared at me quietly. Her face was kind and concerned. She put her hands on my shoulders and I sat up straighter. I felt like she was trying to tell me she understood, and that she had my back. Tears pooled in my eyes and then in hers.
She said, “What do you think, G? Should we bleach it? Maybe platinum?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s fine. It’s good. It’s exactly what it is. I’m just going to look how I look.”
“You look beautiful … strong.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I paid my bill and drove home. When I walked in the door, my girls crumbled to our foyer floor. They cried and touched my head and said, “What did you do, Mommy?” I broke the rules, I thought.
But now, as I stare at my short hair, skeletal body, and oversized clothes, I realize that Kathleen was grasping. I don’t look strong at all. I’ve simply traded one extreme costume for another. I’ve gone from Rapunzel to freaking Peter Pan. I pull out a tube of lipstick from my purse and paint some on. Now I look like Peter Pan wearing lipstick. I feel rage bubbling inside. Why is it so hard to look like myself? I stare at this red-lipped, short-haired, sickly looking woman made of cardboard and begin to feel light-headed. I clear my throat just to hear the sound, to prove to myself that this woman in the mirror is actually me. Hearing my own voice is comforting, so I clear my throat again. I’m in here somewhere. I look strange, but my insides are still me.
* * *
I check in at the front desk, sit down in a corner chair, and start planning my approach. I’ve been in and out of therapists’ offices since my parents first discovered my bulimia. My goal has always been the same: Reveal just enough to be left alone. I considered therapy to be a victory if I could stay sick, if I could carry on with my eating disorder in peace. Today I feel different. I want to be healthy. I just don’t know how. I feel like my heart is failing and I’ve been trying to perform heart surgery on myself. I need to lie down and have someone else work on my life for a while. I’m not here to insist I’m fine, I’m here to say uncle. If I had a little white flag I’d raise it. Here I am. Help. Please know what to do. Please let this woman I’m about to meet know what I should do.
I’m brought back to my senses when the door opens and a woman wearing a crisp, modern, white pantsuit appears in the waiting room. While she scans the room for me, I examine her. Her eyes are as smart as her suit. She looks more professional than warm—like a woman who is ready to get down to business. She is not wearing any makeup, and this leads me to conclude that we are kindred spirits, which is odd, since I am wearing four pounds of makeup. I think of myself as a woman who does not need or care for makeup but just hasn’t gotten started with that yet. I analyze her and decide two things: I like this woman and I’m afraid of her. I lower my invisible white flag. I am no longer worried she won’t know what I should do, but that she will know what I should do. What if I tell her everything and she decides I have to leave Craig? What if she decides I have to stay? I feel both desperate for and unprepared for clear answers.
The woman’s eyes rest on me and she says, “Glennon?”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s me.”
“Welcome.” She smiles. “I’m Ann. Follow me.” Ann leads me through a hallway and into a small room filled with books. She closes the door behind us, points me toward a chair, and hands me a bottle of water. Then she sits down a few feet from me and picks up a notebook and a pen. She says, “So, what brought you here? Tell me your story.”
Oh, God, what the hell is my story? What’s the opening scene? Did it start on my wedding day? Did it start when I was ten? I watch her pen hover over the page. She’ll start forming her opinion of me with whatever I say first. Control the story, Glennon, control the story. Then it occurs to me I’m too tired to be the author of my life anymore. I just want to be the reporter. And so I begin by reporting what I’m thinking exactly now, here, in this moment, right where I am.
“My husband has been sleeping with other women. I hate him. I want to stop hating him but I can’t. I don’t feel safe in my own home. I’m angry all the time. Not just at him but at everything, especially men. Why do they throw away their families for sex? I hate sex. No matter what happens, I’m never having sex again. I’m afraid all the time, too. I’m afraid of staying together. I’m afraid of divorcing. I can’t even think about my kids’ pain. If I let myself go there, I become so full of rage that I actually wish Craig dead and scare the shit out of myself. So I don’t let myself feel and I stay paralyzed. I can’t see any way out of this. I don’t know what the answer is. But I don’t really want to talk about my feelings. My feelings are a black hole and if you take me in there, I’m afraid I’ll never get out. I don’t have that luxury because I’m a mother. I’ve got three kids and a career and I need to be strong and move forward, so I just need some practical advice. My question is this: I love my kids, I love my sister, and my parents, and my work. Is that enough? Can I just skip over this whole intimate relationship thing for the rest of my life? I just want to be a mom and write and go to bed alone forever. That’s my dream. So, you know, statistically speaking, if I divorce Craig, what are the chances my future self will want to find someone else?”
Ann puts down her pen and notebook and looks at me for a long moment. Then she says, “It seems that people are made for intimacy. It’s near impossible to avoid that instinct. I’d say your chances of eventually feeling drawn to someone else are extremely high.”
“Damnit,” I say. “So my future self is going to forget this mess and this pain and eventually want another relationship? All right. When this fool that is my future self meets somebody, what are the chances that my new relationship will be better than the shitty one I’m in now? Can you give me percentages?”
“Okay. Well, I don’t know Craig yet, but let’s start with this future relationship. Let’s say you meet someone great in five years. Your relationship potential starts at a hundred percent. Take off ten percent for the inevitable tension that’ll arise as he helps raise your kids. Take off another ten percent as you watch Craig marry someone else and you struggle to let her help raise your kids. Take off five percent because of second-marriage baggage, and another ten percent because divorce is so expensive that money will likely be an issue. Now take off another ten percent to account for this particular guy’s quirks and hang-ups and imperfections. That’s a fifty-five. Now take off another twenty percent if you bring all this pain into your next relationship. So you’re at thirty-five percent. A low F.”
I look back at Ann and feel surprised and grateful. She is giving me numbers because she understands that in the midst of this chaos, numbers are what I need. She is not selling me any love bullshit. She is a woman giving it straight to another woman. This is just math to us. Ann’s face says, Look, I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying this is what we’ve got to work with. I am, in this moment, certain that Ann is on my team. I’ve only known her for ten minutes, but I trust her.
“Fantastic,” I say. “I have that. I already have my very own F relationship. I mean, Craig is devastated and working hard to get me
back, but we are still a solid F. No question about that.”
“Yeah. The F you know, right? We have a lot to figure out. I’m just saying there’s no easy escape here. Going will be tough and staying will be tough. It’s going to be hard either way. We just have to figure out which hard is right for you.”
“If I stay, then I need you to tell me how to be married and never have sex again. I’m done with sex. Such a cluster. I’ve been handing over my body to boys since I decided that I needed taller, stronger, more confident people to protect me and claim me and tell me I was important and beautiful. I can forgive my child self for that, but now that I’m a grown-up, haven’t I earned the right to keep my own body to myself? Don’t I have my own power now? Yes, I do. Still, our whole marriage, Craig can stop me anytime and say, ‘I want something and I want it from you because you are here. So I am going to request that you stop what you are doing, strip down, and meet my wants. This will prove that you love me. That we love each other. That all is well.’ He can say all of this with just one smile. And if I don’t want to smile back and drop everything to meet his wants, I’m rejecting him. What if I’m just refusing to reject myself for once? Especially now, since I know it’s not enough anyway? That he’s been using other bodies just like he’s been using mine? Forget it. Sex has done nothing but hurt me. It’s a dangerous game rigged in their favor. I want to wash my hands of it. Whatever the hell kind of intimacy that is, I don’t want it. I have intimacy. I have friendship. I have my kids. I have my sister and my writing and my dogs. I don’t need sex. I really think I’m beyond sex. Above it maybe. I think I might be Gandhi.”
Love Warrior Page 14