Chapter 36: What Is That Pink Shit Anyway?

The doorbell rings, and I wait.

I am going to vomit right here on the doorstep. Couldn’t take it, cleanup in Aisle 3, please, go get the pink stuff. Twenty four years of denial lie in the pit of my stomach, tossing, turning, roiling…

My friend opens the door, and I collapse into her, my friend, my dear friend, my lifesaver, the only person I can tell my deep, dark secret. I am a mascara-dissolved zombie, dark makeup smooshed everywhere. I can barely see. Hey, Adrian??

She gets me up into her apartment, and I collapse, all of the years of repression crashing out of me in a torrent. I’m hysterical. Bring on the men in white coats and shoot me up with something strong I can’t pronounce from Schedule Two, I’m ready for the padded room.

And, I finally confess. I confess it all, I want to leave, I want to be done with this marriage, I feel trapped, I don’t know what to do. It all seems impossible.

We live in a beautiful rebuilt house. My kids are amazing, my son is approaching college. WHY can’t I just force myself to make this work? How dare I upset this picture-perfect ministry life? Yet behind the painstakingly maintained portrait of a good Christian wife, I am internally crumbling, though I hide it pretty well. Or at least I think I have, who knows? I tend to think I’m kinda tough, after everything I’ve been through, just give it to me, I can handle it, and yet I’m not, as I damn well know from my years of working in ministry, there’s only so long you can hide what’s really going on before it all pops out, a tube of biscuits left in a hot car leaving a disastrous blob of goo on the dashboard for all to see.

And this is crashing out in a tidal wave. Something finally snapped in me, not sure why now, not sure what exactly caused the last straw to crack that camel, but I just can’t keep crying in my bedroom closet anymore. Something has to change.

And so, I find myself at BF’s house, let’s call her BF because she has been a best friend to me, since my first church in Tiny Town. She has known me for close to 20 years, and had gone through a less-than great experience divorcing her own husband a few years ago. She has never judged, never condemned me for anything, so when the water finally dumps over the edge of a crumbling dam, she’s the one who’s there as I fantastically crash and burn into a pile of twisted wreckage.

And I talk, and talk, and talk. About the years of fruitless attempts to make it work. About the struggle to make something that’s not working appear as if it is, nothing to see here, move along, folks.

My frustration with myself, with the situation, with the fact that it’s tied in with my very career, minister in an AG church which means I can’t divorce, all of these impossibilities swirl around me and I feel I’m drowning in a sea of questions with no clear answer.

If I divorce, I will most likely lose my job and be blacklisted, no one wants a worship director going through a divorce. I will have to find a new career path and give up the job I’ve loved for over 20 years. BF insists that Pastor Almost won’t see it that way, he had supported her through her divorce, why wouldn’t he support me through mine? I am more cynical about it, having already been in the situation in which I had been fired from a church because of a differing viewpoint. Just one of those fun life lessons, when you’re up against a belief system, you cannot win.

And the drinking… I had been drinking at night, to cover, to numb, to keep it going, to continue pretending things are working. It’s not like I was drinking a ton, but definitely for the wrong reasons. I have a close friend at this time who has been in AA for years, and I decide, what the heck, what could it possibly hurt if I go to a few meetings with him? The drinking definitely isn’t helping me think any straighter about this, so I go, and am almost immediately confronted with myself.

I start reading what they call the Big Book, and it’s Chapter 5 that is my undoing. I want to blame alcohol, and I dutifully quit drinking thinking AHA! That must have been the problem all along… but that’s not the demon behind the door. Direct excerpt:

“Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves…” honest with themselves… HONEST WITH THEMSELVES!!!

The words scream out to me from the page. They stick with me, picket sign holders marching through my brain in a tireless circle shouting YOU ARE NOT BEING HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND YOU KNOW YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TOTALLY HONEST WITH YOURSELF SINCE YOU STARTED THIS CHARADE AT 18!!!

Oh, I may not have had an alcohol problem, but I had a HUUUUGE problem with self-honesty. And so, I keep going to these meetings, and hearing about being honest with yourself, with taking responsibility for your role in things, but the more honest I become, the more my charade is cracking, the more cheap paint is peeling off the facade.

I have always felt it incredibly important to be authentic, and I am being about as authentic as a three-dollar bill. It has to stop.

I tell one of my sisters, she is shocked. I believe her exact words were holy Fucking shit. We are the ministers in my family, how could anything possibly be wrong? I mean, when I say I hid this really well, not even my close family knew. But, thank God, she listens, and understands. Does Mom know? God, no, my parents have so much respect for us as ministers, how can I tell Mom and Dad I’ve been living a lie? DH has been the minister for my brother’s funeral, for my parent’s 50th anniversary, for anytime a minister was needed through the years for anything. I can’t do this to them.

I meet with another close personal friend at this time, she is a dear friend whom I came to know while I was working for Pastor Jock, she is in her 60’s and full of a lifetime of wisdom. I meet with her over coffee and pour my heart out, my story, and she is wonderful, and compassionate, and caring. It’s just my latest round of falling apart in a restaurant, and as we are finishing up, I see Joe Sham walk by and stare at my swollen red face, uh oh… how much did he just hear? Did he just stand up from the booth DIRECTLY BEHIND US??

Oh, this is not good. Remember the guy who was at least partly responsible for getting us fired from Pastor Jock’s church, the wolf in sheeps clothing who claimed to be for us, but was always against us, the guy whose fingerprints we were repeatedly finding on daggers sticking out of our backs…?

loose lips sink ships…loose lips sink ships…

I am in SUCH big trouble.

and my answer to how fast a grapevine can spread, and strangle…comes quickly.

Someone’s been busy planning against me for years, and just got the ammunition they need.

All around Tiny Town, letters are delivered.

Two short sentences.

Carefully designed on the backdrop of that stupid Willy Wonka meme.