the truth shall set you free

 Thank you to everyone who is reading and following along with me on this journey. I have felt the strength and love and prayers I have been sent by everyone. I’ve had some very intense experiences with feeling the love and peace and calm and knowing where it came from. But this post isn’t about that.

What happens when you open Pandora’s Box and take a see dive into the past is that sometimes there are truths that pop out that are pieces of information...but it’s like opening an old chest in an attic and sifting through lifetimes worth of stuff that is basically like dumping a 1000 piece puzzle out all over the floor. The pieces are there, but it takes a lot of time to sort the edges from the middle, and the bit of info are so tiny compared to the big picture it can take a while to see what’s supposed to be there when all the pieces are sorted and put back together the right way. But sometimes it takes trying a whole bunch of different pieces to find the ones that click together. Sometimes there are so many pieces that even ones that seems to fit together isn’t always the right pieces in the end.

So that’s what happened...I had all the pieces but they didn’t fit together, even though they seems to at first. I had pieces together that didn’t fit, and the big picture I got still didn’t look the the picture on the box. So I pulled what I had put together all apart and tried to rearrange the pieces so that the true picture became clear.

One I spent my time grieving and writing and hours upon hours of talking it was so obvious that the truth had been sitting right in front of me the entire time, the pieces were just  put together wrong. What snapped me out of it was my old friend who was there the night I met my hubby...she sort of initiated the entire thing. She’s know me over half my life now. She said to me “I’ve know you since you were a 19 year old little brat running around the hospital, and you are one of the strongest people I have ever known, so act like it”. And I was l like “Oh yeah...I am strong. I forgot who’s daughter I was for a second there, but I got it now.” And I took a step back at my puzzle and realized it was all wrong.

The truth that came out because of my unrelenting quest for the truth, and the inability to reconcile the person I knew with the lies he had told, the things he had done. Something wasn’t making sense. I took myself back in time. Remembered everything from the day we met onward. And one thing I kept thinking of is how I’ve looked into my husbands eyes millions of times over 21 years. I’ve seen his soul, especially in those very intimate moments where we are connected as one as we keep our eyes connected...and I remember a sadness I’ve seen come through sometimes, almost a pleasing look in his eyes begging me to know the truth. The night we met and our eyes connected across the bar for the first time, I saw it then to. The pleading in his eyes that said he wanted me to know the truth but that was the only way he could communicate that, he didn’t have the words or if he did he couldn’t say them. And I remember small hints that have been dropped like little Easter eggs in movies where they don’t broadcast them, but really in tune people figure it out and find all the easter eggs, and feel more connected to the movie and walk away with a better understanding of the plot.

We spent hours and hours this week talking. I had switched to night shift this week to help with coverage, and I’ve had such little sleep since last week. Once my friend pulled me out of the darkness and we talked and talked the events of the past and all his little Easter eggs he was leaving me started to Be some revealed, he showed me where they were all hidden. And as it usually is, the truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes of my life.

There were two revelations that are things I had suspected or known a small part about, but not to the extent I needed to in order to understand. People can make us believe what they want if the truth is too hard to face.

The first thing is that when he was 12 one of his stepmothers sexually assaulted him. He never said anything because he was afraid he wouldn’t be allowed to see his dad, who left him when he was a kid, he watched his dad drive away and waited for him everyday at the window for weeks.

2 years after that he met a boy who needed up becoming his best friend and so much more. He told me “I fell in love with him in the biggest way. I didn’t fall in love with him for any other reason but him. I loved him without it being about gender. None of that even mattered.” This continued on in absolute secret until he met me, through all his girlfriends and through his marriage, which was all just a way for him to try to cover for himself, to hide it, to try and forget that he loved someone he couldn’t fully be with, not in the way he wanted. He didn’t know how. And how pressure from his mom and bra mom when he was just 18 to marry this girl, for family optics. He said he knew it was completely wrong and he hated that he felt so trapped. It was all a family cover to prevent people from finding out about his being with another guy, because by that time people were starting to find out and talk about it and they got less and less good at hiding how they felt about each other.

I watched his face change as he recalled the story. He would get a wistful smile when it seems like he was remembering a good memory. But after I searched his face I met his eyes, and I saw all that pain and emotion and bottled up love he held for so many years, trying to deny himself. His lies and coverups started unraveling when he would let loose and tell a story, and hints were sprinkled throughout. But I think the thing that really punched him is that over the last year I have been really working to get back to who o really am. And since the summer, and each season brings even more of this out, but I have been able to be my authentic self again, I found my way back. I’m still rough around the edges but my mental and emotional states have evolved along with me, making me feel like a badass super hero.

“I think that’s amazing.”

That was my reply to his confession. And I smiled at him. It broke my heart to hear his stories, to imagine how painful that must have been for him to have been ever able to tell his best friend and lover how much he loved him. And it was instant, the soaring love I felt for him, the extreme need to wrap my arms around him and protect him. And for the first time in his life he cried over this. I could feel 30 years of sadness leave his body. And I admitted my truth.

That I have never felt like I was enough. Like I wasn’t girly enough for guys to date, but I wasn’t male-like enough to be in a relationship with a woman, either. I just felt like I didn’t fit in. And from the moment I met him, he always made me feel like I was perfect. And he still does.

And I know that it had to happen this way. That we had to tear down every brick and talk about every hard and uncomfortable thing in order for me to finally see his entire truth, the whole picture, with the pieces all fitting neatly into place. I knew exactly how he felt and why everything happened. I filled in words for him when he didn’t have any.

I told him that I think it is amazing and beautiful because he was able to full and freely love, that he has the capacity to love like that. That I would always be his safe place. And he said that I was only the second person who had made him feel like that...the first being his best friend. But they never got to tell each other how they felt.

I know now that it had to be like this. That I had to be strong enough for both of us to find my authentic self again, in order to help him feel ok about his.

A week ago I had told him that it would be a long time before I ever felt like I could be intimate and trusting in that way with him again. And a week ago it felt like the impossible. But a funny thing happens when you let the love and empathy and kindness and compassion shine through, you are rewarded a million times over.

I thought it was going to take a long time for me to feel like I could be close and intimate with him again. But once he revealed his true self to me for the first time, it’s like my whole heart opened wide towards him. And we lay there last night with our bare chest pressed hard together, holding each other tight and staring into each other’s eyes, it was like we were transferring everything we were each  feeling separately and ended up making a big huge love, breaking unconditional love that transcends time and space.

And I know that with my help and strength and love that he is going to be ok. And that now that we are living the full truth with no more lies and guilt and doubt, that there is nothing that we can’t handle and that would ever tear us apart. 

We’re graphene.

That’s what happens when you let love lead. The past has healed the present.