by Jennifer Leigh
When an acquaintance returned from a stint in Americorps, it was the beginning of the end– though I didn’t know it at the time. The world was melting down into the liquid pool of fast money known as the dot com bust. Financial matters didn’t interest me. My mind was made up on a soul level. I loved the idea of giving a year of my life strictly to service. I wanted to save the world, I wanted to save others, and deep down, I wanted to save myself. Americorps felt like home. My dream to improve lives and strengthen communities became my passion.
At the time I was bored, living in a town that felt too small. Everyone I met was like everyone else. Invisible and stuck, I wanted out, I wanted newness and challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it. I was about to graduate college and walk straight into the Americorp office and sign up when I was diagnosed with lupus. I was in constant pain. Every single day it hurt to be awake. Most days were a running countdown that started when I woke up, hyper-aware of how much time had to pass until I could be back in bed. Instead of enjoying my day and being present, I was counting minutes until I was back in my california queen bed with a black and white paisley comforter.
Except being back in bed wouldn’t bring relief. Even laying down was painful. Surrounded by pillows and heating pads, I would twist and contort myself until I found the sweet spot and could fall asleep. Only to be woken up anytime I moved. The searing pain would jolt me awake and I’d have to start over. Chronic pain was an isolating experience, hard for others to understand. Especially when you look healthy.
My post-college plans of working for Americorps disappeared into swollen joints, chronic pain, and chemo treatments. I was tethered to lupus. Forced to navigate my new normal, I put my nomadic aspirations aside and did the adult thing. It felt off, an ill-fitting suit on a child. I never grieved the loss of my dreams. Instead, I forged head first into a new life like a candle melting down. I was happy for a while until the cracks started to show, happy until that slow melt started to burn.
I tried hard to fit into a life made for someone else. The more discomfort I felt, the harder I tried.
Through sheer force, I tried to mold myself into an idealized version of what life was supposed to look like. I met a guyand started dating. Bright blue eyes, curly hair. Stocky and taller than me, he was funny and kind, a total Boy Scout type. It felt good, normal, grown-up. We moved in together. I cruised along, happy with my illusions until one nosey morning I found the ring. We had been together for a year. After he left for work I was poking around and found it in his bottom drawer. Inside a small jewelry box was a gorgeous three-stone, platinum set ring that glimmered in the sunlight. I was nauseous. Marriage had never come up, not even once. I was twenty-three and wasn’t ready. Panicked, I put the ring back.
The next few weeks were non-stop conversations with friends and coworkers. I talked to everyone but him. I didn’t tell anyone I was snooping as I was too embarrassed. I accidentally found it. Never once did I consider talking to him. Instead, I made passive comments hinting I wasn’t ready.
I was cynical and untrustworthy and scared, still reeling from a diagnosis a year and a half earlier. I didn’t just have walls–I had a fortress. I thought I was saving his feelings at the expense of my own. I didn’t want to hurt him or have hard conversations. I didn’t trust myself enough to know what I knew. I chose the path of least resistance hoping it would work out in the end. I couldn’t tell the truth because I didn’t know-how.
We planned a weekend getaway in Savannah and I knew it was happening. A last-minute panicked conversation with a friend amounted to: If you say no it’s game over. You can always say yes and change your mind later.
He proposed in the hotel next to the bed. I don’t remember most of it. There was a candy heart in the ring box and I was really quiet for a while. Finally, I said, “I think so.” He wanted to set the date and I delayed.
This wasn’t supposed to be my life. I wanted him because I didn’t want to be alone, I wanted him because I didn’t have any other options. I wanted him because I was used to the chaos.
We found each other because we met each other’s needs.
A yes to him meant saying no to the life I wanted. If I said yes then I’d have to accept defeat and give up on the hope of a life I wanted.
I would have to commit, admit this was my life, and nothing scared me more than commitment
It wasn’t just him. It was me. I didn’t trust myself or what I thought I wanted.
After we’d been engaged for a year and a half with no wedding date set, a friend sat me down and said you can’t keep dragging him along. You have to make a decision.
We’d been together two and a half years and I still didn’t talk to him about my reservations. I wanted to protect his feelings. It didn’t occur to me that silence was the more painful option for both of us. I wanted love but didn’t know how to love. I was a mess.
Our wedding was in late spring. The weather was perfect, warm enough for a beach ceremony. My best friend’s mom officiated. It was a small, intimate ceremony with close friends and family. The venue was my dream location. I loved my dress, although it was more red carpet than a wedding dress. He looked handsome in his suit. The violinist made me laugh during my vows. We had a great time, even though I was uncomfortable being the center of attention. We had an awful DJ but we danced anyway.
A week after the wedding we purchased a home. With the ink barely dry on our marriage certificate, we moved into our new life. Our vows and future solidified with an address. The first house we looked at was love at first sight. No need to see any other houses. Love made us blind to the distance from work, family and friends. We rationalized that it wouldn’t be that bad. In a newer neighborhood still being built, it reminded me of Pleasantville. Charleston-style homes, bright colors, double porches. On the first-floor porch we put two of the white Adirondack chairs his brother made as a wedding present. I hung a hammock off the second-floor balcony. The sidewalk went from the curb to the front door and we lined it with flowers and a sago palm on either side.
The next thing I knew I was twenty-eight years old, married, a homeowner, with a real job. On the outside, it was idealized perfection. Misery on the inside. I loved the home but hated the location. I felt suffocated by obligations and responsibility. I loved my husband but didn’t trust him. We were married but never happily. Even at the altar I had one foot out the door. It got hard. We lived in the suburbs and spent two hours a day in traffic. He worked nights and we got along great as long as things were going well. I liked my job but it was a far cry from the dreams of Americorp. I pushed harder.
Our life looked like a success. Shiny marriage, shiny house, shiny jobs. A perfect life in a box. Just add fake smiles and a bottle of wine. It looked perfect until it didn’t. Within months the cracks began. A few lies surfaced. My dream home was far away from friends and family. We were isolated and the drinking took a sinister turn. The cracks became craters.
I wasn’t alone in not speaking the truth. 2009 was a house of cards. I dissolved into my own meltdown. The bill came due for everyone. Banks didn’t tell the truth about their investments. What was promised as safe was risky debt. Mortgages bought with unverified income. Magic math that would qualify anyone. If you were breathing you were approved. The company I worked for said we were family yet their actions showed otherwise. The house was beautiful, but a mortgage wasn’t the same as security. The job was real but the loyalty wasn’t.
I couldn’t speak the truth so I tried to love what I had. I forced it to fit and it made us both miserable. I didn’t know what is repressed will always return. When we can’t say what needs to be spoken, it speaks through our environment. It spoke through the mistrust in our marriage, his inappropriate relationships, my need for control. He had several texting relationships with other women, texting non-stop while hiding it from me.
I found an email address he didn’t tell me about. Then I found the message asking for more pictures. I asked to see the email account and he wouldn’t show it to me. He opened a credit card without telling me. He bought a car without telling me. He didn’t mention his ex was in town or that he had gone to dinner with her. He went out of his way to hide the texts from her.
He asked a random girl on social media for more photos.
Not telling the truth is an act of concealment. Hiding the truth requires structure, elaborate plans, and controls. I couldn’t face my shortcomings so I attempted to create a perfect life. Perfection requires a lot of energy that I didn’t have. Perhaps subconsciously I wanted him to be as miserable as me. I was right about everything. I knew best. I set guidelines and rules for him to follow without considering his feelings. I didn’t let him have a say in our life. I was right. No room for him. I chose it all.
I blamed my husband, I blamed karma, I blamed 2009, I blamed everyone while ignoring the truth. Me not being honest when I found the ring was the basis for everything that occurred over the next six years.
Instead of being truthful, I settled for the appearance of truth. Each day brought a fresh circle of hell to my doorstep. I never knew which part of my body would hurt or what activity would send me over the edge. I was powerless over my body. Some days I could play tennis or go to yoga and be okay. Some days a walk around the block would break me. Somedays I could go to the beach and others 30 minutes outside would take weeks to recover from.
I couldn’t trust anything. I couldn’t predict or plan. I couldn’t even wear shoes. Forget heels. Old Navy flats were the only shoes I could wear for longer than an hour.
Lupus was unpredictable. I could do things until I couldn’t. Things would work until they didn’t. I had no idea what would trigger my immune system so I stopped doing anything. It was easier to stay still and do nothing than risk angering my body.
There’s an exhaustion that comes with chronic illness. The ones without an identity or name recognition are particularly tough. Not only did I have to deal with the mental and physical and emotional stress of being sick but I also had to educate people using the energy I didn’t have. A constant fight to be heard, to be believed.
The fight wasn’t only with others but also with myself. Years of not being believed created self-doubt. I knew I had problems with alcohol. Even then I knew it was keeping me small. Separate. I knew I was using it to manage my unresolved grief. I knew I was using it to avoid deeper connections and intimacy. I knew but wasn’t ready to know. Instead I ignored it. During the first years together my husband and I drank daily. It’s easy to drink. It’s well-marketed. The justifications are endless. I’m in my 20’s. It’s what you do. It’s harmless. It was fun in the beginning. Alcohol was something we did in addition to our relationship. We went out with friends for drinks, communal and expansive. It included other people and other places. It was welcoming until it wasn’t. I drank to take the edge off of my day without realizing the edge is where the truth lives. The uncomfortable edges I drowned were trying to tell me truths I wasn’t ready to hear. Dueling disasters dominated my life and then multiplied.
It was easier to ignore problems with alcohol when he was home. Harder when he wasn’t. If he was working, I’d walk the wine aisle. I told myself I’d only have one glass, that it would go well with dinner. I’d finish the bottle and have to throw it away on the way to work. The alcohol helped with my feelings of being stuck. I wanted a life that wasn’t available to me. Physically, I was stuck in the same town I grew up in. The very one I couldn’t wait to escape. I was tethered to my geography, my family, and more importantly, my doctors. I was tethered to my job, my health insurance. I drank because I was in pain, because I was bored. I drank because I wasn’t able to face the grief of being sick and of unrealized dreams. I drank every night. He drank every night. Alcohol was the glue that kept us together. Our relationship was built on alcohol. It kept us together by keeping things good enough. It shut off the part of my brain that never shut up. I was tightly wound and terrified of everything. It opened me up and gave me the ability to relax. Then it became a coping skill. A tool to manage pain, both physical and existential. It was my best friend, always by my side.
I was stuck in scarcity. Emotionally stuck.
I wanted to be a different person but couldn’t figure out how to get there. I was stuck in the same patterns I learned in childhood. Martyr, victim. Stuck in relationships where I felt powerless.
I didn’t have control to change my life. My life was a set of circumstances happening to me. I had no agency.
Over time alcohol took over a bigger part of our relationship. Instead of the opening act, it became the main event. Instead of adding to our relationship, it became our life.
What started as sharing a bottle of wine became a bottle each. By that point, I was in full crazy mode, making myself sick with suspicion, checking his bank account and his phone records. I saw a charge for concert tickets and sent a text interrogating him. Wanted to find out who they were for. I was certain he was hiding it from me. I confronted him and he said he bought them for us. It didn’t occur to me that he bought the tickets for us.
Three days after our third wedding anniversary, I was a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding.
We were already having problems. We knew our relationship was in trouble but didn’t know how to stop it. I had a work emergency and came home late the night of our anniversary. I was late for dinner. He was hurt and accused me of putting work above our relationship. I left early the next day.
The wedding was incredibly fun, a reunion of college friends and the guys we studied with in Australia. I spent the night catching up. At the end of the night, my husband went upstairs to get ready for bed. I stayed downstairs to smoke a cigarette. It started with a group but in the end, it was me and Tim, my college neighbor and closest guy friend. We talked and went deep. He had recently lost his father, and I talked about my marriage. It all came out.
The truth came spilling out. How I didn’t trust him, that I’d made a mistake.
Everything I avoided facing came out on that bench in front of the hotel. My husband came down and asked me to come upstairs. I was finally telling the truth and unwilling to stop. He went back upstairs alone.
I see now how he must have felt. Me crying and unwilling to go with him. We were losing our grasp on the relationship. I spent the night crying with someone else.
Still, I wavered. To quit and leave meant I would have to be alone, figure out how to untangle our lives. I didn’t want to lose my best friend, my financial security, my dog, my story. I didn’t want to lose the story that made me believe it was all okay. If only I could turn a blind eye to what was happening. Ignore it, leave well enough alone. Stop digging under rocks if I didn’t like the dirt.
The next morning he woke me up and stormed out of the hotel. Leaving to go home. I got up and drove home and that was the end of our relationship. It would be another six months before we separated, but it was over.
Driving home, I was tired. Tired of being the one to do the work. To start the discussions, to apologize, to change. I made a silent agreement with myself that I wasn’t going to bring it up. It was up to him to speak first. A silent battle of wills lasted a few days. We lived in the house, slept in the bed, and did not speak or interact.
A few days later he finally brought up the conversation that had been festering for days. We blew up. Anger spewed, then silence. He wasn’t getting over it and he wasn’t talking. I didn’t know what was happening. I felt crazy. I just wanted him to talk to me. Get it out. It was bizarre. I felt he was holding out. Waiting for me to bend. To do what I had done numerous times before. Forgive and forget without him lifting a finger or attempting to change. He waited for me to let it go. Except I couldn’t. Not that time.
That was the line in the sand. If I gave in, if I brushed everything under the rug, then I’d have no one to blame but myself. Too many times, I dropped the issue and played nice. He wasn’t going to bend. To ignore the truth one more time meant compromising a core piece of my spirit. Breaking a piece of me that couldn’t be put back. A melted piece that could never be glued.
I couldn’t.
Other disasters loomed on the horizon. The company I worked for had tension lingering in the aisles between cubicles. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. At the time, leadership was led by intimidation. Careers were built on dead bodies. It was ruthless. At a desk level, I kept my head down. But in those few months leading up to the announcement, I felt it. Everyone moved faster, spooked by the invisible force of company politics.
Outside work, the financial collapse revved up. Lehman had gone under, layoffs, stocks bottoming. No one knew what to do. No one could stop the bleeding. There was frenetic energy. Everyone was jittery and unsure of what would happen next.
On a quiet Friday morning, the regional manager walked in unannounced, flanked by two stern-faced women. He walked straight to the lead manager’s office. Seeing him and those unsmiling women, I knew. I called my husband and whispered, “I think I’m being laid off today.”
An hour later, unit managers were called into the office. An email announced a meeting in the conference room.
A regional manager who’d been threatening to close the office was already in the conference room. His smirk failed to hide his enjoyment. He loved doling out pain. The stern women passed out tissues. One box per row. Take a few and pass to your left.
The head manager stood beside the regional manager. Two faces of humanity. One in pain, one cruel.
We knew where it was going when he started his speech.
Office closing.
Business decision.
60 days.
Reapply.
His words were drowned out by a woman to my left, crying, “I’m too old to find a job. Who’s going to hire me now?”
It made me feel crazy.
Exiting the room, we were each handed a blue folder. Our layoff party favor, with name, years of service, severance, unemployment, and Cobra information.
My husband showed up. We hadn’t spoken more than twenty words in weeks. He didn’t hug me. We stood there, walking on eggshells, keeping our distance. Even facing a loss, we couldn’t pull it together to give comfort. We attempted to talk, but I couldn’t form a sentence. I lost my job and he couldn’t let down this power struggle long enough to hug me. In my head, I tried to figure out a future that made sense.
Everyone was trying to make sense of the situation.
A chorus of the recently laid-off echoed in the background.
I don’t know what I’m going to do
Recession, no one’s hiring.
I can’t believe they really did it.
He was a pompous mother f**ker.
My husband drove me home, stopping by the liquor store. A magnum bottle of wine for me, vodka for him. I needed numbness from pain and discomfort. We called a cease-fire in our misery and spent the night talking. Options, possibilities, worst case, best case. I cycled through crying, raging, accepting defeat. Still no hug. Still the distance. Wine may have chilled the thaw but no amount of tragedy could fix our standoff. That was a fact.
Because of my lupus I needed health insurance, so I had to move to keep the same job but in another city two hours away. My husband would stay in the house and we’d alternate driving to see each other. We had sixty days before I had to move. The clock counted down. The move required a one-year commitment. We were going to stay together. We would make it work.
I had to interview for a job I already had. To stay with the company you had to go through the full hiring process all over again. Recruiter, phone, face to face. The callousness did not escape me. Everyone from management to support were all interviewing for a job we already had with a company we already worked for. It was ridiculous.
I had gone all-in. I was a lifer. I loved my job, I loved my coworkers. It was challenging. It gave me the stability I craved. It had great benefits and generous vacation time. It was a job that came easy to me and I was on the fast track. I believed if I worked hard I would be rewarded
The layoff was a brutal reality check in how corporate America works. I didn’t realize the culture had shifted. I missed the memo. Loyalty was an empty word. Like everything else in a disposable culture, it sounded good but lacked substance. Betrayal. Not just for me but everyone. The company we placed our trust in flipped a switch. Ultimately that’s what it was. A switch. Our lives, our energy, our performance, and our loyalty and dedication were reduced to a simple business decision. It didn’t matter how many nights you worked late or how many weekends you came in. It didn’t matter how good your numbers were. None of it mattered. We were simply a number, all bound under a single light switch. So long, suckers. Flip the switch on your way out.
At home, my husband and I still weren’t speaking. I was desperate for an answer. I wanted him to yell or tell me he hated me or was cheating on me. I could work with any of it.
But radio silence? I couldn’t do it. Desperate for answers, I searched for a reason. A basis for such a big personality change. I had always been suspicious, always been nosey. But I was in overdrive. I obsessively checked his phone records. It was non-stop. I looked up spy apps to recover deleted text messages. I tried to sneak looks on his phone. I was crazy with suspicion.
A couple of weeks in, still silent, I checked his phone records. He’d been texting a woman he worked withnamed Joanne nonstop. All day, all night. He’d done it before. A different girl. It wasn’t the first time. We already had issues with it. But this hit was different. Here he was spending all his time and energy with another girl. She got him. I got the cold shoulder.
Mistrust turned me into a person I hated. I hated myself for checking his phone. I hated myself for not believing him when he told me he loved me. I hated myself for breaking into his email. I hated him more for what I found.
Why couldn’t he stop hurting me?
Grasping harder, I pushed him further away.
The emails.
God, the emails.
The email account I didn’t know about.
The horrifying requests for more pictures. The flirting. The clandestine nature of it all. The obvious thrill written in every single blank space.
His smooth lies.
I gave the ultimatum.
I couldn’t be with someone I didn’t trust. I moved into the spare room but the calls to the girls haunted me. It was too much to leave, so I bargained. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. We were already joined. The house, the dogs. What would it look like to fail so quickly? He was perfect. Everyone loved him. My family set us up. There was too much to lose. If only I tried harder.
Meanwhile he agreed to counseling. The end of the road, the last-ditch attempt to fix what was already broken. The subject of alcohol came up. The counselor tried to hide his shock when we told him how much we drank. He seemed baffled by the fact that we didn’t think it was a problem. Of course we didn’t. We couldn’t. You don’t voluntarily give up the glue that holds you together.
He asked us to go two weeks without drinking. We lasted three days. French restaurant. Dinner. One glass. We praised our restraint in not getting a bottle. That glass became an after-dinner drink and a bottle on the way home. We were back at it. He wouldn’t return to counseling, so we’d never have to admit to failure.
At that point I couldn’t do anything. If he wasn’t going to work on anything, I had nothing to work with. We were going crazy trying to not say the things that needed to be said.
We didn’t know any better.
We refused to acknowledge the inevitable ending.
Questions echoed in my brain.
How did we get here?
How do we fix this?
I’d been angry for so long.
I was tired.
He was tired.
We were tired.
Tired of fighting insanity. Fighting harder, pushing harder, hoping to strong-arm the love we lost back into place. I was caught in the middle. It was too hard to walk away. Too scary. If he met me halfway we could figure out how to stop.
Then his annual work trip cropped up. We had gone the year before and it was fun. I forced an invite even though he didn’t want me there. I was too jealous to let him out of my sight. Of course, Joannewas there, the one he spent his time texting.
She was beautiful.
He was mean.
I was drunk.
I picked a fight.
I fought dirty. It ended with him yelling, “I want you to pack your f**king bags and go home.” The next morning I packed my f**king bags and went home.
That was the last time I wore my ring. I sometimes wonder if he felt like he had been scammed. That I had pulled a bait and switch. I was sick when we met, but I hadn’t learned to say no. I hadn’t been broken by the unrelenting pain of chronic illness.
It was fun when we met. We went out and traveled and stayed up talking and laughing. Other than my doctor’s appointments and treatments, it was as though nothing was wrong. I could still spend the energy pretending I was normal. I was in denial, but at least the denial was fun. He dated the fun girl and married the shrew.
One night we were talking about lupus and he commented, “Had I known how hard it was going to be, I don’t think I would have stayed.” There was no malice or regret in his voice. It was a simple statement stating the hard truth of illness. Had the roles been reversed, I would have said the same thing.
We lived this bizarre life. Occupying the same space. Sleeping in the same bed. But we didn’t speak. We didn’t touch. We ignored each other. A game of you let go first. Both waiting for the other to give in.
The silence was unbearable. The move date approached. I tried harder. Trying to get us back together. If I moved without us resolving it we were done. If I was this suspicious and crazy living with him, there was no way I could handle being two hours away.
It didn’t matter. I had to move. He drove to my new apartment and we went to lunch. I was having panic attacks. I begged him to stay the night. Grudgingly he did. For the next few months, we lived separately during the week. Didn’t talk or interact, but each weekend he came up or I went home. We would sit and drink and ignore the elephants in the room. By then there were so many it was hard to keep count. As long as I could ignore the problems it was great. Except ignoring wasn’t my strong point.
I was angry. I was confused. I was suffocating.
I had lost everything.
I couldn’t grieve.
One of the last weekends before the separation he drove up. We had talked about going on a date. A real date. We were going to try. We were about to leave when his dad called. He wasn’t feeling good and was scared he was having another stroke. We dropped everything and rushed over. No date night. Nothing. Thankfully, his dad was fine. Back at my place, I shut down. I was tired of doing everything for him and his family. We constantly dropped everything for them. It wasn’t that. It was that I wasn’t getting any concern. It was completely one-sided. I was the one who lived alone for months while he lived with his parents after this dad’s stroke. I was the one who would drop everything and go to the hospital if something happened. Or go to his parents. I was constantly giving. Giving without any consideration of my feelings.
And where was my freaking hug?
I didn’t get a hug.
I had to beg him to visit.
I had to endure endless months alone.
And yet, I dropped everything anytime I was needed.
Same drama, different week. Weeks later I drove home and we were out on the porch, talking.
The same conversation. The very definition of insanity. Doing the same thing. Saying everything but the truth. Pretending we were back to normal. The lie of normal felt good. We leaned into the lie.
“Are we supposed to just live like this? Separate during the week, ignoring each other during the weekends?” I asked.
“I hope it doesn’t turn out like that,” he said.
Then he went to bed.
I sat there staring out into a dark, unfamiliar night.
The ball was in his court and the week was filled with radio silence. On Thursday I broke. I wasn’t doing it anymore. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was done. I ended the call and started drinking. It was over. I was done holding on. I was done playing a weird charade of ignoring the obvious. I called my best friend. I called my sister. And then I called my dad. I hadn’t told him we were having problems. “There is life after divorce” he promised.
I went home the next day. We sat and talked. I told him how I felt, that I thought we needed a break. I meant separation but he responded, “So we’re getting a divorce?”
That settled it.
Three and a half years after our wedding we were separated. We put the house on the market. It didn’t sell. Everything was in my name. The market was melting down in tandem with my marriage. I tried to sell the house for six months. We priced to sell and had a rebate. Not a single offer or second look. If it didn’t sell while the government was giving money away, it certainly wasn’t going to sell when they weren’t. I looked at all my options. Renting was an option but that meant I would have to deal with my husband regularly. Who knew how long it would take for the economy to rebound. I wanted free of him. I couldn’t stay. I wanted to rebuild, or at least have the opportunity. I traded my hug and ignoring the elephants in the room for the hope of a better future.
I met with a bankruptcy attorney. After many long conversations, I decided to give it up. It was a business decision. I thought the foreclosure would be easy. The easiest of everything else I was dealing with. I would send the keys back. Go through the court hearing and then wait seven years for my credit to rebuild.
It would be quick and easy. I was desperate to get past it. To be free from my ex. I was drowning and he was resistant. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t just rent it. Everything was in my name. I wanted to be free from it all, especially him. I was sick and getting sicker. I couldn’t deal with him and my day-to-day life.
I told him to take whatever he wanted from the house. I’d take the savings, credit card debt, and mortgage. He walked away only owing his student loan.
What was once a symbol of love and our future now stood empty.
A reminder of what was lost. He took his things and left his ring.
I drove two hours to clean out the house and have a yard sale. The remnants of our love story strewn across the lawn. A final sale. A final attempt to gain anything from our time together. Unable to haggle over memories, I accepted whatever amount was offered.
Sitting in the driveway, the moving van already on the way to my new apartment, I stared at the house and said goodbye.
Because, frankly, that was all I had left.
One long goodbye.
Because the house was in my name I was sued for foreclosure and sued by our HOA. My ex called me angry because he’d been named in the suit even though I’d told him he would. They had to clear the deed. I thought rolling would allow for a quick rebound. Get it over fast. Get to recovering quickly.
I also thought my new life would be better than the one I left. I couldn’t get out ahead of my life. Sucked into a vortex of unfelt grief, sickness, loneliness it was an endless spin. I knew it was crashing around me yet I didn’t know how to stop. Stop the drinking, stop the pit in my stomach that never let up. Stop the world crashing around me. I wanted to stop and yet I didn’t want it to end. I loved the chaos. It was destructive and painful and perversely comfortable.
I was on a train that had gone off track. I held this belief that sometimes you go too far off course and the only way to get back on track is for everything to fall apart. My life followed a cycle of calm then destruction then rebuild. Again and again. I knew it was happening yet I didn’t know how to stop it. My world was burning. Something I both feared and desired. Alcohol made good enough okay. Made isolation okay. At least I had something to do while watching my life burn.
Two years after the move, the foreclosure was over except our mortgage was an eighty-twenty. I still owed forty thousand dollars. The mortgage approved during a time of fast money and shady lending followed me into my future. Young and foolish, I didn’t think before signing on the dotted line. I ignored the fact that it had to be in my name because his credit was terrible. I wanted the house and what it represented. I wanted security. Shiny security. I paid by signing on the dotted line.
His life got better while mine got worse. He bought a house, got married, and had a baby. I was sick. I was single. I was living in a crappy apartment. I was drinking every night.
I decided I wanted to buy a house but couldn’t. The forty thousand I owed was still out there and would put a lien on any property I owned. I’d dealt with the foreclosure twice as long as the time I owned the house. All I wanted was to be free of that time in my life and I couldn’t shake it. My ex was still in everything I did. Still a part of everything in my life, like a fire I couldn’t put out. There was no statute of limitations. I couldn’t wait it out. I had to face it.
It was unfair. He was living his best life while I was suffering. I didn’t sign up for that. I signed up for the foreclosure. Not to be dealing with it seven years later.
My dad stepped in and negotiated with the bank. They would discharge the lien for seventy-five hundred dollars and I would potentially have an eleven thousand dollar tax bill when it settled. I reached out to my ex, asking that he pay half. It seemed like a reasonable request. He wasn’t open to it. Of course, my approach didn’t help. We later emailed and made up. He was open to discussing a possible offer. Our relationship since splitting had been a push and pull. Neither of us was able to fully detach. We still knew what buttons to push. Quickly falling into our roles. He gave breadcrumbs and I still wanted to win an imaginary battle, to remind him of what he’d missed.
I was sober by that point. Very newly sober. We stayed up one night texting. Quickly falling back into our old routines. After all those years apart things didn’t skip a beat. We agreed to meet, have coffee, and discuss options. I wanted the money he owed me but I also wanted to see him. I looked good, I’d lost the alcohol bloat. I wanted to remind him what he’d missed. I wanted one more shot to win the divorce. A cheap shot. We made plans to meet. We texted again and he asked how much he should pay. I said half. It was both of us who signed on the line. He pushed back. What I thought was obvious was oblivious to him. I realized then he was never going to pay. He was going to give me just enough. And then pull away. The same old game. Him going just far enough to make me think he was genuine and then standing just out of reach. Build hope and bail. We were going to meet the next day.
I bailed. I was finally able to see how that movie would play out. I was done. I made up an excuse and went radio silent. He tried to contact me but the spell was broken. A couple of months later I paid the debt. Nearly a decade after the foreclosure, I was finally free.
During my entire meltdown, it never occurred to me to put my needs first. I didn’t know what boundaries were. Being a good person meant bending over backward for people. It was my way of controlling my feelings. Of being the martyr of every interaction.
My parents divorced when I was 10 and 15 years later they were still taking each other to court. A contentious relationship. In my attempts to avoid the aggression of my childhood, I went to the other extreme. Total submission. I rolled. I’d like to blame him. Paint him as a terrible person. Make myself the poor victim who he took advantage of. But he wasn’t. He accepted what I offered. No more no less. A monster, yes. But a monster I allowed into the dark corners of my own life. I thought the depth of my suffering showed the true depth of my goodness.
I mistakenly believed that being liked and agreeable was the great marker of acceptance.
So consumed with where I was, I couldn’t see clearly. It’s a terrible feeling to look back and realize you caused your own suffering. It’s much easier to blame others, circumstances, and bad luck. Especially when there’s just enough truth to be believed. It makes it much easier to convince yourself you’re the victim instead of the perpetrator.
I knew I was on the wrong path. I knew I was making the wrong decision but I didn’t know how to stop the runaway train. I hadn’t learned to say no. The only word in my vocabulary was yes. I hadn’t learned to trust myself. I hadn’t learned to be honest, only accommodating. Boundaries and self-worth weren’t in my vocabulary
I was a yes machine. Without the no, I had no shape or boundaries. Groundless, I floated through life. Without the benefit of boundaries, I was undefined and unable to say who I was or what I valued. I didn’t trust myself to make the right decisions.
Yes was expansive, compliant, and giving. There was nothing to keep me grounded. Without the no, I became a formless pliable putty, molding into whatever shape I needed.
One no would have changed the course of both our lives.
No to the proposal.
No to the mortgage.
No to the first job I found.
Instead, I said yes.
Yes, I’ll forget about the texting.
Yes, I’ll have another glass of wine.
Yes, I’m happy and not at all angry about any of this.
Yes, I’ll let it go.
I let him believe my lies. It was easy. Saying no meant I had to find someone new and I wasn’t interested in doing that. Who wants to start with a sick person? He was easy. He knew my story before we met and still wanted to be with me. His knowing felt safe. I didn’t have to risk being rejected. Relationships were hard enough. Who wants to spend days at the hospital to be with someone whose body was wrecked into a future unknown?
Lupus defined me and I only saw my contribution through a lens of my shortcomings. I didn’t have options. My personal scarlet letter. An L on my chest. The house and foreclosure, the marriage and divorce, the job and the layoff, the move. So much of my life story evolved from a single yes. It could have all been avoided with a single no, except it’s never that simple.
There’s no stopping someone who is determined to avoid the truth.
I would have found someone new to hide behind. I would have still drunk too much and avoided intimacy. Lonely and keeping my distance from others, I’d still be a slave to beliefs that kept me from trusting myself. I’d write the same journal entries detailing how life was unfair and was out to get me. I’d create new action plans to get the life I wanted.
I would have stayed distant even if I met someone. I wouldn’t have been honest to myself or anyone else. I wouldn’t have taken care of myself or faced my pain. I would have kept running from and avoiding my pain at any cost.
The details would be different. A different guy, a different house, a different career. I would have taken a different path but rock bottom would have been the same. It’s never the details, it’s the commitment to self-sabotage. There’s always more than one way to self-destruct. The only no I was capable of was to myself. Boundaries and limitations give shape to a life. In-between those lines I stopped melting and learned to burn to a fine ash. A dust so fragile it blew away. That is how I learned to rebuild. By turning up the heat, I ignited the fire. Blazing headlong into the moment I learned once and for all the value of a single no to something other than myself.
A lifelong resident of South Carolina, Jennifer Leigh received her degree in history from Clemson University. A certified yoga teacher, she loves to journal, try new foods and podcast binge. Fascinated with the why behind personal beliefs and actions, she writes about healing, addiction and health.