Something Is Always on Fire

by Measha Brueggergosman

  Looking back on that fall of 2009, in the living room of the house I could no longer afford, I now recognize the downward spiral from which those half-dozen people were attempting to save me. At that time, I took a deep breath, kept my eyes bone-dry and said, “Thank you all for taking the time to voice your concerns to me. I’ve just come from a very long trip and I need to rest.” I went upstairs and didn’t come back down. In retrospect, I do forgive the husband who left me for caring enough about me to set this in motion, but I still regard it as horribly invasive. Why didn’t he intervene when he saw the first signs of my self-destruction? Why did he assemble an arsenal of embarrassment that would only serve to humiliate me? I know I’m not the easiest person to confront, but the situation had become so polarized that an intervention could only make it worse.

  I know there won’t be any interventions this time around. He has flicked the switch to off, and the only way he can get out the door is if he leaves and justifiably doesn’t look back.

  The moments where reality snuck in and burst my fantasy bubble were the moments my Jacobs revealed what they were truly made of. It could be an airport confrontation, an unwelcome phone call from my spouse, or a stranger asking how my husband was. My commitments outside of the world I’d created for him in our relationship chafed against the reality of what I was willing to offer, and ultimately he was forced to recognize that my loyalties—unlike my body—did not lie with him.

  Such a crossroads came when I had to tell Jacob I was pregnant. With my husband’s baby. After Markus and I had reconciled in 2010 and had our first son in 2012, we were trying for our second because I wasn’t about to raise a serial killer by having an only child. Jacob already knew I was committed to having another baby by the same man, but I lied to him and told him I’d been artificially inseminated, so that he wouldn’t think I was still with my BabyDaddy. I also wanted to give him plausible deniability with his own tight-knit, conservative family. My husband and I had gotten pregnant faster than either one of us had expected, and part of me was so excited to share this with Jacob, because, after all, we were modern adults and we understood each other. We’d met each other at a time in our lives where these things were happening. Sure, I thought, our “life rhythm” might be slightly off, but we were in sync where it counted. Plus, he was in no position to be fathering a child, and I wanted the same father for both my boys. I was nowhere near famous enough to have multiple BabyDaddies. I grew up in a small town (and currently live in one) and I know that having multiple babies with multiple men out of wedlock is something only real celebrities (with real money for nannies and several houses) can do and get away with.

  If I’m being completely honest, I also wanted to see whether Jacob would stay the course with me. I was having another man’s baby, but I still wanted Jacob to be happy for me. It was crazy, not to mention the height of selfishness. Of course he wasn’t happy for me! Not at first, anyway. I was not looking to hurt him, but I was pragmatic: I did not have a lot of baby-making years left and I wasn’t willing to risk my son not having a blood ally in life. I was not willing to put Jacob’s needs, expectations or feelings ahead of the designs I had created for my actual family. I knew I was throwing a carpet bomb on our love, but I did it anyway. I was open to being pleasantly surprised, should he decide he loved me enough to stay.

  Jacob did stay. He had an incredibly open, empathetic and selfless heart to see me through my second pregnancy. He would sing and talk to the baby growing in my belly and kept my secret before I was sure I wanted to go public with the news. That made him the second great love of my life. When my youngest was born, Jacob sent me a note wishing me all good things and gave me space to enjoy this blessed event with my family.

  But that’s just it. I didn’t enjoy it. I’d shot myself in the foot. By deceiving and undermining and, frankly, shattering the boundaries of decency, I almost ruined arguably the best thing to ever happen to me since the birth of my first child. Granted, in response to the losses we’d already suffered, I was equally gun-shy about telling anyone about my third pregnancy, but what was supposed to be a triumphant pregnancy for the woman the doctors said shouldn’t have children because of her enlarged aorta got downplayed because I didn’t feel I could truly be happy or demonstrative about being pregnant, lest I risk hurting Jacob’s feelings even more than I already had.

  Sure, he came around. But his initial reaction to the news involved yelling, screaming, slamming doors, and eventually total silence. He tied himself up in knots trying to wrap his head around what I was putting him through. When he finally did make his peace with it, the damage was already done. I know how ridiculous it might sound now, but I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize “the peace,” so I downplayed my joy and accepted my penance. Meanwhile, with my husband our relationship was just there. Sort of content, sort of secure, sort of happy. It’s not actually fair to compare the two, because Markus and I were the pregnant parents of a beautiful only child. I loved our life and what we had built.

  I recount this as an illustration of how, even when God chooses to bless me, even the most delicious of happenings can turn to dust in my mouth if I’m living a life of deceit and compromise. I knew, even as the months of my pregnancy progressed, that I needed to turn this prognosis around, because I feared it would affect my unborn son. That somehow Mama would send him these in-vitro signals that he was not wanted or that his arrival was anything short of miraculous. I agonized between my external pressure to please and my interior passion to nurture. I would wake up in the middle of the night and sob and sob and beg God to please let my baby be born healthy—mentally and physically—despite my inability to get it together. I desperately prayed that by the time my Sterling Markus came into the world, his pride of place would come from the God of all things, because Mama did not have the strength of character to be unreservedly happy about her pregnancy. I wept ceaselessly and begged God to make sure my youngest knew he was wanted.

  I wish I could go back and love every single minute of Sterling’s pregnancy. It’s truly a testament to God’s grace that He has entered into that space I couldn’t fill, because in the beginning every cuddle I gave that boy was tinged by the guilt I harboured about not keeping his time in my womb devoid of personal turmoil. God’s unmerited favour has made that almost a distant memory now, as the waves of love I have for both my boys wondrously continue to grow in intensity. I hate that I felt one ounce of conflict about Sterling growing in my belly; that I let some man come between me and my miracle. I unreasonably resent Jacob for not immediately understanding how much of a miracle this pregnancy was for me and that the tension of his reaction tainted everything that came after.

  Please keep in mind that I’m saying all this for the first time: the composite Jacob, the pattern, the implications on the life I wish I could have made work. You might be asking yourself where Markus was through all this. She might not be “considering” him, but he hasn’t disappeared, has he? All of this was locked inside and gangrenous. I got to where I needed to be, I sang my concerts, I chose to live in blissful ignorance about the state of my finances and had affairs. The infidelity I brought into my marriage, combined with how much I was away working, rotted everything from the inside out. And before that happened, it felt like I had two hearts but one life. I suffered under the illusion that my life with Markus was unrelated. Invisible. As in, visible only to me. I liked what Markus reflected to me when it was just us. That is to say, it was a sacred space. I was grateful that he understood and respected my job (you’ll remember he had been my manager), but after we separated the first time, he left the family business and pursued other interests and income streams, which further disconnected us.

  Markus and I have always been private, and that goes double for our children. My marriage, as I see it, slowly died over time, but my respect and admiration for Markus is as bright and shiny as the day we met. I would even say we were happy. For a while after our post-separation reconciliation I was eve
n satisfied and fulfilled. We were new parents who had been bonded by the grief of losing our twins, rejuvenated by the arrival of Shepherd and excited to expand our family. Once Markus had successfully completed his paramedic studies and we travelled together as a family for my work, my confidence as a mom grew. Consequently, the part of me that was hungry for new experiences resurfaced and I went back to my old habits.

  The last and final time Markus confronted me, I wasn’t going to insult him by denying it the way I had done in the past. This is how a strobe light got pointed at my relationship with Jacob. I was doing the very thing my brother had cautioned me against. I was living my life motivated by guilt. Nevertheless, it took me several attempts to leave Jacob. Because I don’t give up.

  The first time I left I convinced myself it was the right thing to do for my self-worth and mental health. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t just be happy and satisfied in my marriage and with my two beautiful boys? If I could just get my head right and keep my blinders on, this life could really work for me.

  My first gig after my second baby was in São Paulo, Brazil, three weeks after Sterling was born. I was the soprano soloist in Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, with Mark Wigglesworth conducting. For Sterling’s arrival the month prior, Markus and I had invited my saintly Swiss parents-in-law to Nova Scotia to ease the transition to Big Brother for my eldest while I got on a consistent nursing and pumping schedule, got my voice back in shape and Markus ran around getting Sterling’s travel documents for Brazil in order. At one point Markus drove twelve hours to the Brazilian consulate in Montreal to apply in person for Sterling’s visa to be sure it got processed in time. (Why a five-minute-old baby would need a visa is beyond me, but he did!) Meanwhile, I was in Halifax trying to get Sterling’s passport processed in time. I still can’t believe it all worked out.

  I thrived after Sterling’s birth. His older brother had the undivided attention of his paternal grandparents; I was travelling with my family and singing like I was in my twenties. I told myself I was keeping Jacob on ice, but the fact is, he hadn’t written to me for weeks and in my mind it was over.

  I wanted more. I also believed in my heart that I deserved more. It’s not about money or position or prestige. It’s about dependability, reciprocity, discipline and loyalty. Plus, by being with Jacob, I was not living the way God wanted me to live but instead was deceitful, secretive, prideful, guilty. No wonder I’m so unhappy, I told myself. It’s so cold and lonely when I create such distance between me and the Divine.

  One thing I like to do is write emails and not send them. I get to say whatever I want to say and exorcise myself of all the conflict that is raging on the inside. Better out than in! as my mother would say. I’ve written countless unsent emails over the years to all the Jacobs. They’re unsent because once I’ve written them I feel better and don’t see any reasonable justification for sending them. Plus, I never have to be vulnerable—glued to my phone, desperate for a response. That doesn’t mean I obsess any less, mind you. The text message time stamp is the stalker’s worst enemy. (The fact that I can see that you were just online not writing to me is frankly ALL the abuse I can take.)

  When it came time to end things with the Jacobs, I told them in unsent emails that they were nothing but fuel for cheesy poems and heartsick love songs and that I had to get out or I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on when it came time to teach my sons how to treat their partners and build lives independent of me that they could be proud of. I told them that their so-called sacrifices were purely self-serving because in the end I set things up so that they didn’t have to actually risk anything. Meanwhile, all that I am has been called into question as I repeatedly second-guess myself trying to figure out how much I’m entitled to and whether I should be more understanding.

  I always left the recipient line empty, lest the email be sent by mistake. I knew who I was writing to, and I knew any response I’d get wouldn’t satisfy, or it would be filled with excuses that would just make me feel worse or leave me with more questions. I knew that the only reason I wanted to even send the email was to elicit a response, and I didn’t want to want a response. By not sending anything, I never gave him the satisfaction of seeing me truly laid bare. It seemed to me that I maintained some semblance of dignity by articulating how I felt without needing his reaction to it. (Instead, I saved it for a book. Ha!)

  Still, I lost several years of my life and a few chunks of my heart contorting myself into knots for the Jacobs. But as I’ve noted before, T. D. Jakes teaches that there is no way to become wise without doing a TON of stupid stuff. And God, in His infinite wisdom, turned a crime into a blessing when my phone got stolen this past summer, along with all the photos and videos I had of him. I’d already saved all the photos of my babies into the Cloud, so I didn’t lose anything of true value . . .

  If I could go back (which I can’t), the first thing I would tell my younger self is that I wasn’t fat. At all. But I would also warn her that she would have to work really hard to be solely attracted to one man for her entire life. Nobody told me you had to work to stay completely devoted, mentally and physically, to the same person. I thought it just happened. Nobody could have convinced a twenty-one-year-old me that I wouldn’t love my husband anymore or that I would live long enough to suffer the anguish of him not loving me anymore. I realize how naive it sounds for a thirty-nine-year-old to be saying this, but in my marriage I was still very young because we never really grew out of the roles we’d established for each other in our teens. He was good at math; I was bad at finances. I was a master intuitive cook and decorator; he tossed unseasoned chicken into a frying pan and threw it over a salad, while also thinking that an inflatable Darth Maul chair was a viable piece of furniture for a formal living room. He paid all our bills; I made most of our money. I cooked all our meals; he sorted and took out the garbage. He was a person born to be married; it never occurred to me to be faithful.

  Nobody tells you when your marriage is over, but you’re still living under the same roof, that the absence of love is just as painful as waterboarding. That the silent killer of any hope of reconciliation is contempt, and that coming home to what once felt like the perfect haven now feels like a punch in the stomach when your partner looks at you with dead eyes. And you convince yourself that he must have a point when he questions your parenting, your priorities, your ability to make it on your own, because you’re the one who cheated, so all the instincts you trusted before must be fruit from the poisonous tree, including the instinct to love and provide for your children when he leaves you. You don’t even think you have the right to be angry or question him, because he just seems so sure and because he’s your husband! You never thought he could be wrong about anything. And he is such a good dad that you’re willing to swallow the misery of feeling so painfully misunderstood. Oh, and you’re the one who cheated. Just in case you forgot. But the worst of it is, he says he has forgiven you. He’s just done with you.

  So what I want now is to feel like I can get it all under control. The finances, the shame, the regret, the remorse, the sadness. What I want now is to trust God to bring me through the fire and know that what doesn’t kill me makes me mad, and what makes me mad keeps me moving, and if I’m moving, I’m going to do so with purpose and effectiveness, because, oh by the way, I still have to get my babies to kindergarten on time. And they’re watching. They see everything. But they don’t see Mama, the skank who cheated on Daddy. They see Mama who helps them into their PJs, says their prayers and sings with them, makes everything better when things break, blows on their food even when it’s good and cold, gives them cuddles when they go to bed and gives them kisses and tickles when they wake up.

  I write this memoir knowing that my sons will inevitably read it and gain a deeper understanding of who their mother is or was. ALL moms have some idea (vague or precise) of how they want their children to perceive or remember them. But I know that I have no control over that. I can only control how
much I love them and how hard I fight for them. With my dying breath, I will savour their names in my mouth. I know I am not unique in this. I am a mother.

  When I say that I believe you can have it “all,” I mean that planting the seeds and nurturing the growth of things that will bear fruit in the long term is essential to creating a life of substance—which is “all” I need. It might not sound sexy to write in my rhythms or wash the dishes or go to bed early or say no to that invitation to dinner, but those kinds of sacrifices keep me focused on the good stuff. I would argue that counting the poops and pees, and Febreze-ing the gowns IS the good stuff, because it monitors the health of my baby and ensures my colleagues will want to stand next to me—seeds planted that nurture the growth of excellence and efficiency. There are steps that can’t be skipped; not if you expect to see maturity in your investment or you plan to proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with giants.

  Ideally, your professional and personal desires should align and support each other. I’m at my most content when my personal desires bleed into the professional, meaning my innermost source of purpose is gainfully employed by what I choose to do for money. This is what would happen in a perfect world, the caveat being that all bets are off when it comes to parenthood because those little dependants require you to make the ultimate sacrifice: to not put your own needs first. In fact, the law isn’t even on your side! Don’t feed them? Jail. Don’t clothe them? Jail. Leave them alone? Jail. You’re pretty much legally obligated to put their needs before your own. Childhood is the height of leisure. (I’m speaking strictly from a southeastern Canadian perspective.)