A Woman's Revenge

by Sherri L. Lewis

  “I’m not laughing, Lee. And there was no ‘LOL’ after your request or with hers. Or let me guess, is it an inside joke at work?”

  “Work?” I thought Lee was going to turn blue.

  “Yes. I saw a group work picture of you guys on her FI page. I know you work with Juanita in some capacity. And perhaps I should find out myself just what type of work you guys have been doing.”

  Lee jumped up and grabbed me by both wrists. “No! Don’t bring my job into this. Juanita investigates all of our region’s accounts. They might get the wrong idea and I could be fired. If I lose my job, we lose my money, health benefits, et cetera . . . Please, don’t do this.”

  I just stood there, staring at Lee, shaking my head. I could hardly see his face because of the overflow of tears in my eyes that were blurring my vision.

  “What?” He said it as if he was aggravated with me. Aggravated with my tears.

  “I’m standing here bleeding and all you can think about is your job? You don’t care about my feelings and making things okay with me. It took me mentioning your job to finally get a reaction out of you. It took me mentioning your job for you to show some concern and emotion. Wow, Lee. That really makes me feel like I mean everything in the world to you.”

  Lee grabbed his head and began pacing. “Look, you are overreacting. You’re being melodramatic. At this point, you don’t have to believe me that FI is not that serious to me. It’s just something I do with my time. It’s an escape.”

  “An escape from what? From who?”

  The more Lee tried to explain himself, the more he kept jabbing me with the shovel he was using to dig himself out of the hole. What was so bad about life that he felt the need to escape?

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Musik, will you just . . .” His words trailed off in frustration. “Look, I don’t even know what to say to you. I can’t seem to say anything right. But what I will say is that you will not bring my job into this. It would ruin me.”

  I broke down crying once again. I was so hurt, mad, and angry. Lee wasn’t getting it. He wasn’t getting where I was coming from. He honestly had no idea what was so wrong about what he’d done. That scared me more than anything. The fact that he really saw no wrong in what he’d done, to the extent that I did, only meant one thing: that he’d repeat the same things. That he’d hurt me again.

  Had Lee just wholeheartedly acknowledged his wrongdoings, that would have given us a better foundation to work things out on and start over. But we were at the point of no return. I couldn’t feel and think for this man. I could cook his food, clean his house, take care of his children, and wash his dirty drawers, but I could not think for him.

  “You know what, Lee? Just forget it. There is no reason to stand here and do this any longer. For everything I bring up, you are going to have some lame excuse of a comeback that can neither be confirmed or discounted by me. So what I’m going to do is go and get it directly from the horse’s mouth.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m about to straight-up contact every last one of these broads, and, as far as your job, since you like the Internet so much, get to getting online and filling out applications. Spend some time on Monster.com instead of FaceIt. How about that?”

  “Don’t do this, Musik,” he pleaded.

  “It’s already done.” I got up in his face. “You can forget about that little image you like to portray yourself as to your family, friends, the church, and your coworkers. I’m about to put the real Lee Hampton on blast. All those little inbox messages, I’m turning them into notes and posting them on your page. All those little strippers’ pages that you subscribe to will no longer be private. Everybody’s going to know the type of thing you like subscribing to. And I can’t wait for your job to find out that you request naked pictures from your coworkers. Didn’t your company just crack down on anything that could be construed as sexual harassment? Isn’t it like immediate termination now?”

  “Musik, please don’t do that to me.”

  “You did it to yourself!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “You did it to me,” I whimpered. “And now I’m about to do it to you.” Payback was a mutha, and at that moment, not only would divorce suffice, but I had to go out of this marriage with a bang—with the last word—with the ‘W’.

  I ran to get Lee’s laptop, which still had his FI account open on it. “Let the embarrassment and humiliation begin,” I spat as I started pushing and clicking all the right buttons that would take me to his inbox.

  “What are you doing?” Lee asked, almost exhausted.

  I didn’t answer him. I just kept clicking away. Lee just stood there shaking his head, trying to make me feel crazy. While I typed and clicked Lee just stood there giving me a bunch of “I’m sorry’s,” how he’d do better, blah, blah, blah. He shut his mouth momentarily and didn’t open it again until he saw this sinister look creep across my lips.

  “What?” he said.

  “In about three seconds you are going to regret ever creating an FI account.” I taunted him by placing my finger over a button on the keyboard. “As soon as I push this button, just more than your relationship status will be available for the world to see.” I was prepared to put all Lee’s FI information that he hadn’t wanted me to know about, let alone the world, on full blast. Then I was prepared to file for divorce.

  God hated divorce, but there was no way I could stay with this man feeling the way I was feeling now. Betrayed, worthless, not special. Unloved. Not validated. I hear people say all the time that as long as God loves them, that’s all that matters. God loving me is very important to me, but it’s not the only love I want or need. It’s not the only love God wants for us. Otherwise He wouldn’t have bothered to create Eve in the first place. Even God uses man to show us His love. Even God knows His children need other people . . . need to be loved by other people.

  I want to be loved by my husband, my children, my parents: the people who are supposed to love me in life. I needed Lee’s love to validate me as a wife, and I didn’t have that. Only a husband can validate his wife’s role as a wife. Period.

  I hate divorce too. The last thing I want to do is to taint my Christian walk with a divorce. I’ll have to bear that cross. I can hear people now whispering, “What could be so bad that she’d divorce her husband?” I don’t want to have to explain it with words, so I’ll explain it through social networking. “Lee Royce Hampton,” I said to him, “the world is about to see you for the jerk you really are. If I had to learn just what a jerk you were through social networking . . . if I had to learn that being married meant nothing to you, then so will everybody else.”

  With the push of just one button I was about to forward and post information I’d found on his FaceIt page that would put his lying, cheating self on blast. With just the push of one button, I was about to reveal to the world who the real Lee was. On the count of three Lee would suffer the same pain and humiliation I was now feeling. The pain and humiliation he’d caused me.

  One, two . . .

  “Go ahead, do it,” Lee said, causing me to halt from pushing the button. “Put it all out there for the world to see.” He sounded so defeated. Good.

  “I’m glad I have your blessing, because that’s exactly what I’m about to do.” This was no idle threat either. No bluffing involved. I felt as if nothing could stop me from getting my version of revenge on Lee for what he’d done to me, for the years he’d stolen of my life, for the way he’d erased my life from his own. My finger went to push the key that would be the beginning of many public FI postings that would initiate a domino effect of humiliation and embarrassment for Lee.

  Then Lee said something that I had not even taken into consideration.

  “Go right ahead,” Lee said, “but remember, not only will you be putting me on blast, you’ll be putting yourself on blast too.”

  And with that, he exited the room, giving me a whole lot more to now consider.

  Chapter Eig
ht

  Threesome—Every Man’s Fantasy

  Why, before right now, did I not stop to consider how my act of revenge on Lee would not only affect him, but how it will affect me too? It could affect our children. Once something is put out there on the Internet, no matter if I delete it from my computer or not, it’s still out there somewhere. Somebody else might save it or forward it or God knows what. It will always exist. And even a year from now when I’m prayerfully over this whole FI thing, whether I’m still with Lee or not, will I be able to live with it? Will I be able to live with myself knowing that something I did could have an adverse effect on others, including myself, for the rest of our lives? I was so caught up in the moment in trying to hurt Lee the same way he has me hurting, that I wasn’t looking at things on a larger scale.

  Will Lee look like the fool for doing things on the Internet that hurt me, or will I look like the fool for showing and telling the whole world what Lee did to me? I’m so confused and so torn. Yet just seconds ago I was so sure.

  “God, why am I hurting like this? Why did Lee do this to me?”

  As I open my mouth to say something else, instead of words coming out of my mouth, they came into my head. You did it to yourself! Those were my own words. Was I really about to eat my own words? I mean, just because they were in my mouth didn’t mean I had to swallow them . . . right?

  I got up from the computer and walked into the master bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror I just stared at myself. Finally, it was time I speak the truth to myself. Up until right now, I’d never, ever, never spoken these words out loud, but for the first time I was about to. I needed to. I did not want to wallow in the pain and hurt I was feeling now. I didn’t want a Band-Aid and I didn’t want a crutch. I wasn’t born on the church pew, but I know enough about God to know that He is a healer. Period, point blank. Crutches and Band-Aids are not from God. Those were just a minor relief. God doesn’t play around. God heals. In order to take that first step toward healing, I had to admit my truth.

  “I knew my husband wasn’t my spirit mate when I married him.” There I said it. “But I married him anyway . . . even without God’s blessing.” I said that too. It was the truth.

  I knew how bad I wanted the fairytale and I knew Lee just wasn’t that type of guy. But I loved him so much I was willing to give up the fairytale. Maybe not give up the fairytale completely, but just do without it for a while; just long enough for Lee to . . . change.

  “I’m so stupid!” That was relationship 101: the person who you married is the person who you married. The person who they were before they said, “I do,” is the same person after they say, “I do.”

  Change is not a guarantee. Change is not always for the better either. But if you are marrying a person based upon the hope—a wing and a prayer—that they might change to fit the mold you’ve created in your own mind and in your own little world, don’t do it. You have to be willing to accept the fact and live with the fact that the same person you married today will be the same person tomorrow and forever.

  I shouldn’t have done it, not when I knew deep down in my heart that Lee and I were soooo different when it came to marriage. My first red flag that I should not have married Lee was when he used to say, “Marriage is just a piece of paper.” With him being a man of God, that should have sent up two red flags. Marriage is a holy union. The sanctity of marriage is ordained by God. So to say that God’s word is just a piece of paper—something that holds no value—means that the marriage itself, if it ever takes place, will have no value. So why am I now so surprised that Lee doesn’t value our marriage?

  I guess, if I was to be honest with myself, I’m not surprised. I’ve known it all along. Felt it. I ignored it though. I acted like that feeling didn’t exist deep within my gut. The same way I ignored that feeling was the same way I ignored having a conversation about my nuptials with God. To say that God didn’t bless my marriage to Lee is perhaps a little extreme. What I mean is that I never sat down and talked to Him to see how He felt about it. To hear what He had to say. Why? I didn’t want to hear what God had to say. I knew what He was going to say, or I kind of knew what He might have said. How did I know? Because of that feeling I had. Those of us who are saved and Holy Ghost filled know that sometimes a feeling is more than just a feeling. It’s the Holy Spirit rising up in us speaking to us. I didn’t listen though.

  When God knew I was going to avoid having that conversation called prayer with Him about whether I should marry Lee, He sent His message through the Spirit. I swept that feeling under the rug. I wanted what I wanted, and I wanted Lee. I wanted that man, and Lord have mercy, that’s all I got.

  Perhaps that didn’t come out right. Lee is more than just a man. Lee is a dang good man. He works his butt off. In the fifteen years I’ve known him, he has only missed seven days of work outside of his vacation days. He stays on top of the bills. We go on trips and he takes the family on nice vacations. He looks out for all his other family members as well. He calls me no fewer than ten times a day just to talk (unless we are having a disagreement). He takes care of himself and is as fine as all get-out. He dresses nice and makes sure the kids and I dress nice. There is a huge list of pluses and just a couple minor negatives: he doesn’t know how to make me feel like his wife. He’s a family man with other family members, but not in his own home.

  He’s always walked five steps ahead of me instead of beside me. He’d rather invite one of his boys to a fight party than me, even though boxing is my favorite sport. Even though he doesn’t hang out on the streets, when he does go somewhere he never tells me when or where he’s going. He just gets dressed, gets up, and goes, sometimes without even saying good-bye. If one of his family members needs a place to stay, even though it’s our house, he doesn’t ask me for my input at all. He simply says, “So-and-so is coming to stay with us,” and that is usually the end of the discussion. When he wants to make a major purchase, he just does it, not stopping to think once about seeking my input (not my permission, just my input).

  At the end of the day I know Lee is a grown man, but I just always thought when a person got married it wasn’t just about them anymore. I thought that they had to show a level of respect and consideration to their spouse. But instead of Lee doing these things, he just treats me as though I’m . . . invisible.

  “I’ve always been invisible, long before FaceIt ever came along,” I finally admit to the person looking back at me in the mirror. FI just rubbed in the fact that I’m invisible. It put it all up in my face, no pun intended.

  Now here I was finding myself in a mess that I hadn’t even had the courage to go to God and ask Him to bless. And of course what did I want Him to do now? Bless my mess. I might not have turned to God six years ago before saying, “I do,” but at least now I had the courage to turn to God before saying, “I don’t.”

  Right here on the bathroom floor, I kneel down and begin to cry out to God. “Lord, I come to you humble and broken. First and foremost I repent to you for not seeking you in the matters of my marriage before now. But I’m here now, Lord.”

  I begin to pray non-stop before silencing myself to, for the first time ever, hear what God has to say about my marriage. I can’t even describe the feeling as God begins to speak to my spirit and relay His words to me. I’m just paraphrasing, but basically God is telling me that He made Adam. He put Adam to sleep and removed his rib in order to form Eve. He basically did surgery on Adam. After the anesthesia wore off, so to speak, God woke up Adam and he was ready to receive Eve into his life.

  “You woke your Adam up too early. I wasn’t finished with him yet,” God spoke into my spirit.

  All of a sudden I’m feeling outside of myself as I cry and beat on the bathroom floor just hearing God speak those words to me loud and clear. I feel completely torn up inside. My God was gently letting me know that I had messed up. It didn’t matter if Lee had been the head of the church instead of a deacon. It didn’t matter how many times Lee cried
out, “Holy, holy.” God had not been finished with him yet and I hadn’t had even one-tenth of the patience of Job to just sit back and wait on God. To wait on God to finish up with Lee. No, I just had to have my Lee, as is.

  “Now what, God?” What else can I say? “Now what?”

  “Babe, are you all right?” Lee entered the bathroom with a look of heartfelt concern on his face.

  As I stared into his eyes I just broke out crying. I was crying because of the decision I know I have to make.

  “Please, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t want to see you in pain like this knowing that you’re feeling this way because of me,” he said. “Look, I’ll just take down my FI page if that’s what you want me to do.”

  “I want you to be in love with me, Lee! That’s what I want.” Flesh was hard to tame as I rose up off the floor like the anger that was rising in me. “Don’t you get it? At the end of the day it’s not about FaceIt.com. It’s about finding out that I’m not a part of your life. That nothing about me is worthy of mentioning. That I’m nothing to you! Not a first thought, second, or third.”

  I’ve always hated hearing the truth, especially this truth that I’d buried deep within and just went on with life. I’m angry. At myself. At Lee. Just angry; so angry that I feel like throwing things and destroying things. I feel like tearing up and shredding up everything in the house the same way Lee had done to my heart. I really feel as if I’m on the verge of . . . on the verge of . . . losing it.

  You did it to yourself. Why does God have to keep reminding me of that? I know why. I was directing all my anger at Lee all the while I hold a great deal of the blame myself. God knows He has to reel me back in with the truth.

  Yes, I am partly to blame, but by the same token I feel as though Lee should man up and just admit that he wasn’t ready to do the marriage thing. But then I guess in so many ways he had admitted it. But still, he shouldn’t have said, “I do,” if he really hadn’t wanted to. But on the flip side, I knew he was saying, “I do,” when he hadn’t shown a sign that he really wanted to.