My Saving Grace

Welcome back Faithfuls. I hope you took a minute to reflect where we left off last week.  If you missed any part of the story I suggest starting here before going forward.

Much of last year exists as a fever dream, some odd vortex of a place that we know happened but yet we still pinch ourselves for confirmation. What stands out distinctly for me in March of last year besides the obvious, the small piece of Faith that hadn’t died under the weight of all of my happenstance. It burned a little brighter knowing a trip to Italy loomed on the horizon. Just a year before I’d been invited to a friend’s nuptials on the Amalfi Coast. And although I’d be leaving behind a still sickly Wander Bread, the stress of it triggered my gut so much I was considering not going, I also knew it meant Lil Sis Thee Stallion (LSTS) would be home. She’d agreed to accompany me since My Past’s passport had been revoked shortly before our 2018 wedding (another story another day). In the moment, it felt like generalized happy to see my sister who’d been away for the better part of a year, but deep in my feels the trip presented an escape and an opportunity to be fully and completely me with someone who cared about me selflessly.

Truth be told LSTS is my best friend. She knows me far better and truer than any person on the planet. She is the only one who fully gets me, and I mean that not as a diss toward any of my closest friends because they love me fiercely. I learned that later in the 2020 fever dream, but my sister knows what I’m saying even when I’m not saying it, which is both refreshing and frightening. If I’m being honest, had it not been for my sister being with me through the storms of 2020 they may have consumed me whole. I say that with complete and full honesty. Panorama aside, 2020 hit me with a haymaker left hook that left me winded, wounded, and struggling to pull together Faith. Sometimes the strength is in falling down.  

By mid-March, Italy was ground zero zombie-ville, all flights in and out were halted. And while I fully intended to board a plane to the other side of the world it was probably best for everyone, especially Wander Bread that I stayed home. I asked The Anti Husband, if he minded LSTS crashing with us to ride out her two-week vacation. Remember at that time, we all thought Covid-19 was just another Zika or Ebola that ravaged places we could barely point out on a map. Little did we know, almost a year later we’d be double masked, half shut down, and still working from our houses, at least the privileged few. But to the point, My Past agreed, and she stayed…and stayed…and remains my current day roommate because, the fucking panorama, Wander Bread’s care, and because she got a real up close and personal view into my life. I’m sure in ways she probably wants to forget and ways she’s glad she witnessed because she stood in to remind me who I am. There are no words that I can string together that give enough praise to her for what she helped restore in me.

My sister had the privilege of watching the happenings in my home when she arrived back to Philly. As we drove those Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for months to Wander Bread’s house to take care of our mom in ways we hadn’t imagine would become our jobs until much later in life, LSTS would ask me questions that at first, I found intrusive. They made me hide within myself for fear of betraying the covenant I’d made with a person who I thought deserved my protection. But Lil Sis Thee Stallion is nothing, if not persistent. Unknown to me at the time, she and the Grumpy Gardener secretly spoke about my unraveling. They’d separately witnessed and heard about things that gave them pause, specific to my marriage and The Anti Husband. Full truth, the Grumpy Gardener has never liked My Past…I’d always thought it was little brother jealousy because he no longer held the prized guy in my life role. In hindsight he probably saw the ain’t shit-ness through the guise of good. A fake good guy will get you every time.

But I digress, The Sibs collective decision, while away on the trip to Italy LSTS was to get to the bottom of my discontent. As much as I thought my veneer of put togetherness fooled those closest to me, the one who sees me even when I’m not speaking knew things had fallen so completely off the rails, an intervention was necessary. But we didn’t get a pasta filled, lively, Italian get-a-way intervention. Instead, we faced dialysis visits, cleaning two houses, masked trips to the grocery store, and trying to stay gainfully employed in the midst of the pandemic. Throughout all that other than married life shit, my sister continued to ask, “Are you okay?” She watched as I sloshed caretaking off my shoulders to come home and attempt to prop up a bruised husband’s ego. There was nothing left for me. Those marital cups that are supposed to be filled by your spouse were running dry. I mean 8 years of depletion can do that to a girl. And I struggled to continue to fill him with all of me…because honestly it was at my own expense. But still, I celebrated each idea (minus the full scale shift to the Nino Brown of Sugared Beverages) he presented even if I knew it had no legs. My slip showed at times, I’m human. My Past asked that I stop being so negative. In my mind presenting the risks to any plan isn’t negativity but proper assessment to avoid failure. We understand life differently.

So, I celebrated that he finally decided to put the Pop Up together. My reward, being told that if it weren’t for his friends, he’d wouldn’t have pulled it off. He said that to me not appreciating that I’d given of my time, money, energy, and taking care of my mother that day to help his raggedy ass yet again. He said that to me when here he was poorly executing my idea. He said that to me, when I’d already had the wind knocked out my sails more times than I can count by the man responsible for lifting them. He said that to me. But you know what, it wasn’t and isn’t the worst thing he’s ever done. Some of you probably think it’s him asking if he could have the secks with other ladies. Nope, not that. Sure, I may or may not have wanted to stab him when I told him my mom almost died in my arms and he brushed it off like lint to tell me about another pointless argument he was having with his Stepfather. I do remember locking myself one night in my lady den because I couldn’t stand the sight of his face. But what I still can’t seem to let go from all of this, and maybe this makes me bitter…I know for a fact that a little piece of me died when I watched my Bonus Son move all his things out of my house in early August. That is a pain I will never forgive My Past for until the day I stop breathing air. That is all I can write about it because I just CAN NOT! Sometimes the thing you never wanted is the thing that brings you happiness. The Anti Husband is a happiness killer.

Lil Sis Thee Stallion held me as I ugly cried in a fetal position until I couldn’t any longer. Oddly enough, later that same day the Anti Husband called to make sure I read and processed his letter. Maybe I married a monster. I remember during that conversation saying to him specifically that I’d been his wife, but he’d never been my husband. He had no idea what that word meant and none of his actions supported its weight. My Past doesn’t understand the violence he invokes on the people in his life. I watched it manifest in so many ways in people who I love but will not name because I’m not fit to tell their stories. But know I see you. He will never know how nights when he was “working” at the restaurant I would sit in my Bonus Son’s room just because his scent lingered there. It became a little shrine until LSTS returned home. I probably could still be in his life, but I also know that would mean being wrapped in the life of someone who, I wish I never knew intimately. There is no ability to reclaim my time. My heart splintered into tiny pieces during a hug with my Bonus Son I knew would be my last and the only person there when the dust settled was Lil Sis Thee Stallion. This is all I have to give today Faithfuls, but you know there’s more to tell.

Don’t forget to join me next Wednesday, for the newest installment. In the meantime, and between time, please share, like, comment, and subscribe…isn’t that what we do on this here interweb.

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