Something I've Been Thinking About

I was on Facebook some time in January and someone posted about something hard in their life.  I don't remember what it was.  Maybe their marriage wasn't going well, or their job sucked.  But I read that and I thought, "What if I said publicly how things have really been going in my marriage?"  And I let that thought sit for a while.  Because here's what I assume:  Everyone loves Rob and thinks he's been faultless through this whole Tamra leaving the Mormon church thing.  I doubt they'd believe my story.  And if they did, it'll all come back around to being my fault somehow anyway.  I'm always pegged as the bad guy.

And then I unfriended over 200 people on Facebook and felt a lot better about life (eventually).

As a pre-comment, I'd like to say that I'm used to being the bad guy.  The idea makes me laugh as I type this, but this is a sometimes source of frustration for me.  Rob comes off as a squeaky clean super hero and I'm the one who is to blame for whatever it is.  Rob's nicer and calmer and quieter and more righteous and more on task.  Whatever.  I mean, I understand why this happens.  But it's just not true.  So it's no surprise to me that this carries over to the Mormon church issue.  As it happens, I was the instigator in this particular turn of events, but Rob's inaction is no badge of honor.

So I'd like to set the record straight on this particular point.

When I started the process of leaving the Mormon church, I pretty quickly was hit over the head by the cosmos.  I was filled with love and patience and clarity of thought.  So while I was re-thinking the nature of the universe, God, myself, religion, morality, and existence, there were particular things I was NOT re-thinking.  Mainly: my marriage, children, and family, and my need to love them deeper than ever before.  I knew they needed time.  I was willing to give it.

I was patient.  Rob was terrified and wasn't sure what to do with me.  Should he divorce me and run away from our marriage?  He needed to protect our children, he was sure of that.  So he made it perfectly clear that if I talked to the children about my experience and beliefs, he would divorce me.

To those of you reading this right now who are thinking, "Well, that makes sense," let me make another thing clear:  It is terrifying to live like that.  It is abusive and wrong.  While I don't fault Rob for what he did, because it's more complicated than that, I REFUSE to accept this course of action as correct.  I lived through it.  It almost destroyed our family.  (Insert cuss words.)

However, I'm interested in keeping my marriage, so I honored his wishes as best as I could.  But I pushed back.  Inch by inch I would realize that I couldn't live like that, and I'd reclaim a small piece of my dignity.  I'd come to Rob with my realization and we'd discuss it.  And to his credit, even though it terrified him, he'd give me the inch I needed to breathe, and we'd continue.

I finally identified what I ultimately needed:  A morally neutral space to exist.  Rob wasn't above me in this theoretical space and I wasn't above him.  I wouldn't need to "watch what I say" because what I had to say was just as valuable as what everyone else has to say.  I didn't need Rob to understand me and I certainly didn't need him to agree.  I just needed a space that was safe for him AND for me.  I KNEW we could build that together.  It's not too much to hope for.

Except there are no road maps to this space, and getting there is hard.  So it came to be that by early summer of last year, I was convinced that Rob was just not interested in building this space with me.  Or if he was interested, he was incapable.  I was nearly totally convinced that this whole marriage thing wasn't going to work out.  I still was not allowed to speak to my children, Rob was still very condescending, and while he would give me more leeway, it would blow up in our faces over and over again in very hurtful ways.  The underlying respect that I knew we needed just wasn't there.

And then something completely unexpected happened:  Rob started listening.  I don't know why.  I was looking into every issue under the (Mormon) sun - because it's fascinating - and he started listening to what I was learning.  Most of the things I was reading / listening to weren't new to me, but they were new to him.  And they're not easy to ignore because, again, life is complicated.

In September I told Rob that I wanted to tell the kids what I was finally ready to admit to myself and everyone else:  I didn't believe any of it any more and I wasn't coming back to Mormonism.  AND HE SAID YES.  We talked to them together.

What also started happening about this time is that Rob was catching on to how badly he'd been treating me.  He had been telling me in a thousand different ways that I was worth less than I had been as an active Mormon.  When that started becoming obvious to him, I think he was shocked.  He finally looked at me and said, "Tamra, you're not broken."  I cried like a baby when he told me that.  I'd known I wasn't broken, but HE hadn't known.  That was the moment I'd been waiting for!  Suddenly it hit me how much I'd been enduring.  A year's worth of pain came to the surface.  I was grateful that Rob was coming around, but there was a lot of work to be done to mend our relationship.  He said he was ready to go, and after a week or so of me (literally) hyperventilating about how hard my marriage had been, I was ready to go, too.

(There have been times during this process of figuring out my marriage that I have experienced what I can only describe as PTSD moments.  When Rob realized the pain he'd been causing me, and I was free to stop just enduring pain, the reality of the depth of that pain hit me.  PTSD moments are terrible and terrifying.)

In October we decided as a family to stop attending church.
In November the policy came out and I formally resigned as a member.

Except now Rob was in a free fall.  When I started leaving the church it was rainbows and butterflies.  I mean, it was hard, but it was AWESOME for my inner self.  When Rob started having doubts and stopped attending, his identity was stripped away.  He was terrified and unsure about everything.  I hadn't anticipated that.  Having just gone through it myself, I thought it'd be a more positive experience for him.  It was for me!  Why would it be different for him?

Well, it was different, for whatever reason.  And while that was okay, it was hard to figure out.  Rob had been so unwilling to give me our morally neutral space, and now he was declaring me the moral superiority winner and asking me to lead.  I refused.  I don't WANT the moral high ground, and I certainly won't be his superior.

So Rob floundered.  And as he floundered he blamed me.  Nearly every day he told me that I'd ruined his life.  In those exact words.  "Tamra, you've ruined everything."  "You're ruining my life."  "Everything's ruined because of you."  (Again, for those of you who think this isn't a big deal, please just imagine hearing this from your spouse almost every day for 3 or 4 months. ...  Yep.)

And now we've circled back around to January.  I told Rob I couldn't do this any more.  I didn't want to be married to someone who actually thought I'd ruined his life.  And geez, does he just LOVE suffering?  If I've ruined his life, FIND A NEW WIFE!  Holy cow.  This can all come to an end.

This wasn't the first time we'd discussed divorce over the last year and a half.  I've offered divorce as a reasonable solution to me leaving the church since the beginning of this journey.  I know that lots of couples don't make it out alive.  And I know that church attendance / belief is not negotiable for some couples.  I'm okay with that.  I didn't want to get divorced, and I wasn't looking to destroy my marriage.  On top of that, I was VERY willing to work through this.  I just wouldn't settle for a bad relationship.  Being repeatedly told that you're ruining your spouse's life is a bad relationship.

There's no end to this story, of course.  When I came to him in January as a broken person - with the pain and sadness heavily upon me - and asked him if I'd really ruined his life, he said no.  He was telling the truth and we both knew it.  I cried.  Hard.  I said in a weak voice, "You can't say that ever again.  I can't hear it again."  And he said softly, "I know."  And he held me close.

We're still married.  Actually, for the first time in a year and a half, we're happily married.  Rob snapped out of his free fall depression.  He's figuring out his beliefs ("It might not ever be what you want, Tamra."  "I think you've missed the point, Rob.  I don't CARE what you believe.  I just care that you want me in your life.").  We have reclaimed our marriage and it's a beautiful, wonderful, amazing thing to love someone deeply and feel safe with them.  I don't think I'll ever not feel grateful for that.

And that's my story.  Over the last year and a half, people have generally been so concerned for Rob.  He's been a victim, a hero, whatever.  Very few of those people have even cared to ask how things have gone for me.  I guess since I was the aggressor, I got no sympathy.  Well, those days are over.  I refuse to be the bad guy.  I'm not scary.  I'm not mean.  I'm not wrong.  Well, I might be wrong, but so might you.  In reality, I'm just a person trying to live a good life, just like you.  And that's a lot easier to do now that I'm not being consistently mistreated by the person I love most in the world.

That's what I've been thinking about.

Missed Recess

Teancom came home and told us that he'd had a recess detention.  He's never had one before, so this got my attention.  I asked him what happened and he said, "I didn't show my work on my homework."

... Umm ...

I asked if he was serious and he said he was.  I asked if he'd gotten any questions wrong.  He said he hadn't.

(Here's where I rant about how silly I think it is that he was punished for not showing his work.  Imagine this rant in your brain so that I don't actually have to write it all out.  I mean, you know how it'll go.  You have my thanks for putting in the time inside your brain so that I don't have to.  And look!  I personalized my message for each and every one of you!  I'm very thoughtful that way.)

I tried not to let Tank see that I was rolling my eyes and then gave him some halfhearted speech about how he needs to show his work if that's the rule, blah, blah, blah.

And then Elijah chimes in with, "You got a recess detention?  I loved recess detention.  It was kinda nice to have everything so quiet."

"Did you get a lot of recess detentions?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah, all the time.  Sometimes when I said that I liked detention, teachers would threaten that I'd get a whole week of detention if I liked it so much.  And I said, 'Fine.'"

I just sat there stunned.  I had no idea he'd had so many or that the power struggle had been happening at school like that.  I mean, it doesn't surprise me, but I just didn't realize it'd been happening.

Then he asked Miciah, "Did you like recess detention?"

"I never had one."

"Not one the entire time?"

"Nope."

Tank chimed in, "This was my first one."

"Oh.  I had a million.  They were great."

And that pretty much sums up the personalities of each of my children.

Writings for a Winter Cemetery

If you are a local and you haven't checked out Spring Grove Cemetery, YOU MUST!  We just discovered it as a family in 2015 and I'm deeply sad that I didn't know about it before.  I mean, I'd heard about it.  "It's a nice place to take a walk."  "It's a great place to see Spring flowers."  Sure.  But for reals.  It's a magical place.

So when temperatures topped 60 degrees in mid Winter, I knew I had to stop by even though I only had an hour.

I needed that hour.

I bent down and touched the grass, still soft under my fingers.  I stood amidst a small grove of evergreen trees, listening to the wind blowing the leaves, smelling the aliveness, caressing lightly peeling bark.  I watched the water in the ponds sparkle with the sun and wind.  I exchanged smiles with strangers walking the opposite direction.  We were all friends right then: me, the trees, the water, the grass, the other people who had all come to feel something.

The naked trees got me feeling the most that day.  I love trees so, so much.  I love when they're green, of course, but when the leaves are gone, they're suddenly open, vulnerable, showing what they are inside.  You can see their strong support structure, like a math equation melded with an artist's sculpture.  You can see their fingers reaching out as far as possible into the sky, like they want to touch it.  Like they'll never stop trying to reach it.

And as I stood there, looking at that naked tree, I knew that it was me and I was it.  There are no words for that.  Just a feeling.

Before I got back in my car to leave, I had to stop and look at a specific structure that called to me.  You know, those small buildings that rich people have built to house their remains and honor their family legacy.  This one was particularly lovely.  But what really captured me was that you could see through the gated entrance into a calming, serene space, highlighted by a warm stained glass window.  Everything about it invites you in.  And the gate was locked.

The lock felt like such an intrusion to me.  It didn't belong to this space and yet, there it was, adding a cold touch to what otherwise felt perfect.  And it just turned the whole thing around in my mind.  Who are the chains for?  Who locks them?  The structure invites in, but the chains forbid it.  Who or what are the angels guarding?  And why?

With those answers, questions, and non-answers on my mind, I drove away.

A November Story

My story is set on a Saturday morning in November 2015.  I woke up late, because that's what Saturday mornings are for.  As I laid in bed being lazy, I got a text from my coordinator at Cincinnati State.  There was a class happening right that second and a last minute sub interpreter was needed.  Could I come ASAP?  

Of course!  

Here's what you need to know to realize how urgent this seemed to me:  The class is several hours long, and the one interpreter would have been interpreting on their own for almost an hour by the time I could get there.  It's hard to interpret a college class solo for an hour!  So I very quickly got dressed, tamed my hair, grabbed a granola bar and ran out the door, skipping most of my morning routine.  The college is close to my house, so the drive was quick.  All in all, I ran into the classroom about 40 minutes after I'd been contacted.  Pretty good, I'd say.

Near the end of class I was thinking about what a fun morning this had been, how lucky that I live so close to campus, and how much I love my job.  It just seemed like a perfect morning.  Then Rob texted me and asked when I would be home.  Miciah was at a friend's house, Rob had to leave to take Elijah to a Scouting event, and Tank had just thrown up.  Great.  It was now becoming obvious from what was happening during class that we would run over time.  This meant that I wouldn't be home before Rob had to leave.  I hated the idea of having a young, sick kid at home all alone, but it would only be a few minutes.

Finally, almost half an hour after the scheduled class time, but just a smidgen before class was done, I explained about my sick kid at home, left in a hurry and ran to my car.  When I arrived I realized I didn't have my keys.  Which is totally weird because I'm really, really anal about my keys.  When I get out of my car, I make sure that 1 - I can see my keys, 2 - I put them in the pocket they go in, and 3 - I physically touch my keys.  Levels of redundancy.  It just seems smart.  So where in the world could my keys be?

I looked inside the car.  I couldn't see them.  I backtracked.  They hadn't fallen on the ground.  They weren't in the classroom.  I thought about calling Rob and having him come unlock the car door and I could drive home, since I was just sure my keys had to be inside the car.  But Rob was now 30 minutes away and at a Scout event.  Right.  I thought about asking the student or the other interpreter for a ride home and I'd worry about the car later.  By now, they'd left, though.  Dang it!  I called Rob and asked him to come.  

Then I stood near my car in the parking garage just waiting.  About half an hour later, when Rob was just minutes away from campus, a security guard walked up to me and said, "Are you Tamra?"  

"Yes!  You must have found my keys!"  

"We did."  He handed them to me.  

"Where were they?" I was curious to know.  They MUST have just fallen out of my purse.  

He gave me a funny look.  "They were in your car.  You left it running.  With the door open."

"What?!"

"We thought maybe you'd been abducted.  Usually people don't leave their car running with the door open.  We were just about to send someone to your house to see if you were there."

How do you even respond to that?!

I then spent the rest of the day wondering what kind of IDIOT leaves their car running with the door open in a parking garage!  

...

Though it does make me feel a little better that as I've (reluctantly) told people this story, it turns out that a lot of people have a similar story.  So I'm not the only idiot.

But if you haven't done something like that, now you can feel superior.  Go ahead.  I'll give you this one.

2015, reprise

I know I just posted that I'm grateful for 2015.  And I am.  But now that 2015 is over and I no longer have to think about just surviving the year, I would like to say something out loud:

Screw you, 2015.

Okay.  Moving on.  2016, you don't have to do much to top 2015.  Pretty much, if no one in my immediate family dies, you'll be better than 2015*.  If I don't spend the entire month of November wanting to kill people / crawl in a hole and die, you'll be better than 2015.  If I don't have to deconstruct everything that makes me me, all the while wondering if my marriage is going to crumble and I'm going to lose access to my kids, you'll be better than 2015.

Though if we could keep the personal inner growth thing going, that'd be great.  We don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water, as they say.

So, welcome 2016.  Thank you for coming.



*I don't want to be unclear - no one in my immediate family died in 2015.  But leaving the Mormon church FELT like a death.  An end.  A rejection.  A deep, gut-wrenching sadness.  The only parallel I can think of is a death.

Let Your Imagination Fly

This is Elijah's PTA Reflections poem entry for the year.  The theme was Let Your Imagination Fly.  That's also the title of the poem.

Let Your Imagination Fly
by Elijah Thacker

Let your imagination fly,
Up farther than the sky,
Past all of the distractions,
and annoying contraptions.

Looking down at everything,
Seeing all the weathering,
Looking down at scarlet skies,
I can still see fireflies.

Soaring past the moon so bright,
Look from the streams of light,
Soft as lilacs on the sun,
Farther than we all can run.

Zooming from the edge of Rome,
Barely seeing the edge of home,
Going to uncertainty,
Though almost unwilling.

So that we all find,
The potential of your own mind.
Up farther than the sky,
Let your imagination fly.

Reading Goal for 2016

Read one more book than I read in 2015.  So that's 17 books.

Already 1 down.  Good start to the year!