“HOPE! What hope? Where the hell is this hope? Huh? Who gave you your namesake anyway? Stupid, stupid hope chest.”
My sarcastic banter verged on the tip of lunacy. I was always on the tip, of course, waiting to fall off, waiting to self-destruct. My marriage was far from the dreams I had as a child while I dreamed of love in the arms of the wondering tree. My marriage was back and forth, try and try again. Hope and more hope. Looking for hope. Desperate for hope. Desperate for love. Somebody love me I screamed. I can’t tell you how many times I threatened divorce to manipulate and change the situation while Branson just glared at me as if I’d stay with him forever. Then he’d storm off, drink and hoard up inside a bar or a seedy strip club. I used to sit home and drive myself mad why he’d go to strip clubs and watch naked women, when he had a woman at home? It just baffled me. It also drove me to the point where I’d do just about anything to please him, keep him happy and at home. Other times, I’d sit alone in the dark against that damn hope chest, wounded and broken. It was pathetic. Me and the hope chest, each of us looking for hope, living on crumbs of hope; praying for hope. Hope deferred. Heavy loads, heavy heart, moving in, moving out. Weak wood, weak heart.
“He’ll never change.” I’d say after one of our bitter fights. “I‘m not putting up with this shit anymore. I‘m done.” And then I’d pack my hopeless hope chest and storm out. “This is it.” I’d scream on my way out slamming the door. “Done. Over. Bullshit!”
Four days later, a week later, a month…I’d return. Weak heart. Weak wood. We’d make up. Each time, I’d convince myself that tomorrow would be different. Things will get better. I will be a better wife, a better lover, a better person. THEN…it will be better. THEN…he will change. THEN…he will love me like I need to be loved. THEN…THEN…THEN. But THEN never happened. I drove myself crazy over him. Him, him, him. I felt trapped. Unloved. Unfocused. Undirected. Lost. I needed someone to give me permission to live and tell me how to do it, because honestly, I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to live. And I certainly didn’t know how to love. So me and my weak heart and weak wooded hope chest, prayed, screamed, drank, worried, and lived on crumbs of deferred hope. Sometimes I wondered if it was possible for me to love anyone without giving up my whole soul.
The whole time, deep inside the Dumas of Umbra, the little girl sat restless and waiting. She’d kick her bare feet against my weak heart to feel emotions I didn’t want to feel. She would scream out the truth and beat the walls. I had to shut her out. I pushed her down. I silenced her voice. I didn’t need help. I had the ability to destroy myself—all by myself. Punishment for my sins. Make the bed…live the lie.
I loved Branson in the only way I knew how, desperate and needy and I hated him in the only way I knew how, seething and lethal. It was the only sick formula I could function in. Love or hate. All or nothing. No balance, no rest, no in-betweens. In reality, I needed about twenty five therapists. I am a reactor. I over react. Looking back, I needed him to stay sick so that I could fix him. By fixing him, I didn't have to fix myself. I looked in the mirror but I could never really SEE me. DENIAL is a bone I hadn't dug up. Until now. If all my attention was on him, what he did, said or done, or didn’t do, or should’ve done, or couldn’t do, or who he was seeing, and why, or this and that, then basically all my focus was on him, not me. Eyes on him. Eyes off me. I didn’t have to face the adult or the little girl held captive inside the house that haunted me.
Sometimes in my brief moments of solitude, I’d try to figure out why I married him. What attracted me, what did I like? I could come to no clear conclusion, only that the broken knob inside my head turned and pointed in his direction. That’s it. The only common factor for us was sex. Oh, yeah, we both enjoyed our sex. It was as informal as going to an exercise class. My need for physical affection, intimacy and touch was substituted with sex. In my mind, I believed that love would follow. It will come. It will. I’d give and then I’d get in return. Living on hope.
And then the inevitable happened. The breaking point. I was on a covert mission, obsessively stalking my husband to confirm my suspicions that he was having an affair with a two bit hussy who worked at the convenience store down the road from our home. It was pitch dark except for the light pole at the intersection. I could hear the low hum of electricity flowing and the pings of a thousand bugs bouncing off the glass globe. In the darkness, with my window cracked, the neighborhood was alive with voices stirring, shadows leaping, insanity cracking. I stared at Branson’s truck in the bitch’s driveway behind her cherry red Camaro. I envisioned cracking both wind shields and flattening the tires. I sat for hours listening to front doors open and close, dogs barking, crickets chirping, moths and insects frying in the light and the chatter of crackpot neighbors. I wished for superpowers, Wonder woman shit. Laser beam eyes to blow up her house, vaporizing them to dust in the middle of their sex act. Boom! A satisfied vindictive laugh escaped from my lips. I watched them burn, burn, burn. In the front seat of a borrowed Ford, I went mad thinking of all the things he must be doing with her. I wanted to knock the door down, barge in and confront the worthless bastard, then haul off and stab his scrotum with the four inch spiked heels that ditzy whore was wearing earlier today, when I went in to buy a coke and a pack of gum.
“A dollar twenty eight.” She said not knowing who I was. Or did she? I was calm on the outside but inside the house, that boiled inside me, I looked her up and down with a monster of green envy and jealously. What did she have that I didn’t? She was pretty, sure, a cross of Farrah Fawcett from Charlie’s Angels and Ginger from Gilligan’s Island, but around the edges, all I saw was slut. I waited for her to smile with no teeth but when she did, they were perfect in every way. Bitch! Before I committed assault by punching her freckled way too much makeup face, I threw two dollars on the counter, stormed out and left tread marks in the parking lot. That night whatever sanity I had left was covered with a plethora of dark twisted shit. And thank God, before it was too late, divine intervention, a southern lodestar breaking its way through the muck and mire. My mission was covert, and I could not be recognized, so I wore a disguise, dark sunglasses and a blonde wig. I was spinning off into a terrible, horrible place of adultery—equals murder. I acted the scene out in my head, a hundred times over until every fiber in me was ready to commit the act. All I had to do was get out of the truck…and just when I was about to….a fucking June bug shot through the window and tangled up in my fake hair. God almighty! It was like the plague of Egypt all up around me ‘cause that is one bug that will damn near make me strip down in public. A bug for God sakes. A little bitty June bug. A frenzy followed suit. I tore up the cab and the clips of the wig tangled in my real hair and I damn near scalped myself in the process. While I was cat fighting with a bug, I caught glance of a crazy woman in the rear view mirror. It was just enough, a God glance, a curse glance. I saw a woman I didn't recognize. And at the same time, something strange, otherworldly. The mirror reflection was the wigged out crazy jealous woman and drifting in and out of her, was a white, horrible pasty face ghost figure with hollow spaces, no eyes, lost and dreadful. Momentarily, the childhood vision came back, the Dresden horrors of my childhood. I stared into the mirror mystified. And then it was gone, leaving behind the crazy woman, which left me to wonder which was worse. And then I realized, God sent that freaking June bug on a death mission. “Go forth and wake that crazy Willodean up before she does something irreversible.”
I had momentarily lost my ever loving mind. The buzzing of the lights, the madness, fighting the bug, fighting myself, fighting Branson, fighting things I couldn’t control…everything. In the mirror reflection I saw a broken woman, a tousled wig, crooked sunshades and lost, desperate eyes. For the first time I saw who I had become. What the hell are you doing Willodean? Just leave the bastard. Why do you do this to yourself? I mean, do you think he’ll suddenly transform into a knight in shining armor, a man of your dreams? No. You have no control over what he does. He
is the only one who can change himself. Not you. Get a grip. Get a life. This is making you do crazy things. You can’t stop him no more than you could stop that bug. You can’t. So go home. Leave him. Do the hard thing. Do it. Do what you have to do for yourself. NOT THIS.
I talked to this sad, crazy, hopeless wigged out woman in the rear view mirror, and thought of that damn hope chest and everything it represented. Sheet sets, blenders, spoons, forks, sharp knives and a whirlwind of household items spewed out of it until it looked like Dorothy’s house spinning in a tornado in the Wizard of Oz. In my head, I desecrated the weak wood into a million tiny splinters of deferred hope, then burnt it into a million deferred ashes, and then dumped the deferred, hopeless ash heap, on top of Branson’s deferred never going to be the man I want or need, cheating, lying, almost bald, drunk, piece of shit head. And then I walked out on him, for good. Of course, that was in my mind. How could I do that in real life? My mind was a teeter-totter slipping back and forth in and out of crazy town. All I could think of, is the right, good, decent, loving man he would be with her but refused to be with me. My insecurities flared, my blood boiled green. She would get his best and I’d get his worse. I was just the warm up girl. The rag you throw away before you get a new one. I fell into a maddening psychosis. I saw his hands on her bare hips, his lips kiss her neck, his affectionate longings of her. The affair passionate and blooming. Everything I longed for, and always wanted, she was now receiving. And then a shift. My mind reversed gears. Spinning. Frothing. She must have lured my husband like some petty convenience store tramp. How could they be having sex for hours? But what if they’re actually talking? We didn’t do that. We could never talk to each other.
Of course, affairs were nothing new to Branson. I suspected several over the years and had proof of many but I was too coward to say anything. Too afraid to know the truth. Too scared to be alone, so rather than be alone, I’d suffer through it. I was so afraid he’d leave me. Shit. I’m alone anyway. And look what it’s come to? I’m alone in a borrowed pickup truck in the middle of the night stalking my piece of shit never gonna change husband. What the hell has happened to my life? I don’t even remember having a life. My mind alternated on going, staying, killing, loving, and all kinds of crazy stuff.
I thought about my life with him. Branson routinely stayed out all night, never calling in to tell me where he’d be or what time he’d be home. He acted like we weren't married. I would be frantic, worried sick and mad as hell, envisioning all that could have happened, what he was doing, who he was doing it with and why.
“Why didn’t he love me?” I’d whine. I’d bellow. I’d cry. I’d drink. I’d call all his friends. All my friends. All the family looking for him. Without luck I'd drive around town looking for his vehicle. Crazy shit. I became obsessed with his unavailability and his refusal to be a husband and the man I wanted. The man I needed. It sent me over the edge of a dangerous, painful cliff. I began to believe the lies that it was all my fault. I’m the reason he can’t love me. I was the reason he acted the way he did. I took responsibility for his behaviors.
Me. I must be doing it all wrong. I didn’t observe my mother enough as a child to learn the proper way to handle a man. I didn’t learn the rules of hope chests and blenders and turbo blades. I ripped up the dishrags, the recipes books, the way to a man’s stomach. It was all MY FAULT. I deserved this treatment because of who I am. I’m not good enough. And if I’m not good enough, then I must do more, be better, learn more, love different—more, better. Don’t be yourself Willodean because that is not good enough.
The knives in the hope chest penetrated my heart, one at a time, reminding me of their sad stark truth. I bled the southern sap of my own making. I made the bed. I lived the lie. I took the punishment. That illuminating night in the cab of a borrowed pick-up truck, I saw who I had become, but it wasn’t enough to change me. I had exceeded the threshold of pain long ago.
“I am not enough.” I said to myself. “I must be more.” I threw the wig and sunglasses out the window, cranked the truck and drove home. I told myself I would be better. I would change my ways. I will fix this. I gritted my teeth and held on tighter. I swallowed the bitter pill of denial and silenced the big pink elephant and went about my marriage like the good wife I was going to become. I wasn’t strong enough to see the truth or accept it. For him or myself. I looked beyond the cheating, the drinking and the lies. I told myself I’d be a better wife if I forgave him. If I had done what he wanted me too, then maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe he wouldn’t have to look at other women, or go to strip clubs if I was a good wife. If I gave him sexually what he wanted it would be better. I convinced myself it would get better tomorrow. He’d love me, then. It was always then.
But he didn’t love me. He manipulated me. He controlled me. He dominated me. He pressed me with sexual deviants, I would have never, ever in a million years acted on, had I been in a more secure mindset. He made the animal in me, alive. Had I know the horrible, terrible effects of such dark things I would not have submitted. The final straw was the swap. He wanted to swing with the swingers. One of his friends was involved in the open marriage thing. I was appalled. Floored is more like it. No way in hell, I thought. No freaking way. This went against everything sacred of the marital covenant I knew, believed and my moral compass went haywire. I mean, sure I had done some pretty risky things in life, promiscuous at large, but I hadn’t crossed this line. This was—too much. We were married and to my heart that meant something sacred. When I refused, Branson made my life hell and I never realized it could be more hellacious than it already was, but he proved me wrong. Manipulation is a terrible creator of awful things. I was a puppet he knew how to control with his words, his actions, his refusal to love me, his cold influence and unavailability, his distance. He convinced me that he’d find someone else to give him what he wanted and I believed him. It pressed every button inside me. She’ll get what I deserve, the love that is meant for me. I went into a needy, dependent mode, envisioning him a better man with another woman, me left alone, bitter and thrown away. This made me crazy obsessive, and more so, than I was before, when I was following him all over town. I lost me. Or maybe I was lost to begin with. Regardless, I hated who I had become but I had no control over this maddening, no self-worth, no voice, no say-so—woman that spoke through my lips and used my body. That woman was desperate for love and would do anything to keep it. She kept telling me. “He’ll love me, then.”
The thought of letting another man touch me while I was married sent me to a darker than dark place. The Amodgian shadows swept me away. Their darkness swallowed me whole. This is what he wants. Be the good wife. Just sex. That’s all. No big deal. Do it. Do it. Do it. The whispers, the voices, the manipulation, the insecurities. I get sick just thinking about it now, like I’m living it over again but I know I have to face it now, or never, and it’s part of the reason, I’m so messed up now, is because I pushed it down so far inside me as if it didn’t happen—but it did happen and my body, mind, and spirit will not let me forget it.
To know that I let someone, most disturbingly, my own husband, convince me that this was an act of endearing love on his part, catapulted me to a place of no returns. And the awful, most disturbing fact, is I let him. I said yes but I meant no. I said yes. But I meant NO. During the whole filthy, disgusted act, the little girl inside the house is screaming and beating on the walls of my chest, "She said yes but she meant no. She said yes but she meant no. I couldn’t bear what was happening —I left me. Mentally, physically and spiritually. I watched from above, like catching glimpses of porn, some poor, helpless, smuck of a woman with no control of her life. I felt sad, lost, and consumed with madness. And the thought of what was happening with Branson and another woman basically drove me over the edge. Finished me off. The house inside me shattered, buckled, broke. If there was anything good left in me—it was taken that night. Taken with one broken knob decision. I just wanted to be loved. Jus
t loved. I felt this awful place inside me acting itself out, as if it had happened before in another time, another place. It was too much. The shadows swept in like the lovers I never had, saving me from myself. I went into a state of numbness inside the house, held up in a room I didn’t know existed. When they rushed me past the door I didn’t see the name on the copper nameplate, so I have no idea what room it was, or why it was built but it was familiar, and yet unfamiliar. If I could have guessed the name, it would have been Shame because it covered me like thick tree sap. It was a sticky film I couldn’t rub off, hardened in places I could touch, feel, relive. This was indeed the broke—that broke me. I said yes but I meant no. I said yes but I meant NO. I whispered this chant non-stop, echoing the little girl’s voice inside me, as if it would stop the nightmares of what I done, erase it, and remove my sin. I stopped thinking rationally from that point onward, if I ever did at all.
Branson licked his lips as if this was just the beginning, a taste on his tongue, temptation fulfilled, and wanting more. My insecurities flared and mounted. In my panic, in my craziness, in my neediness to be loved, to be given scraps of anything I could find, touch, taste—I merged myself within him, within his life of control, domination and sexual exploitation. It wasn’t me doing it, it was someone else, that other girl, that other person, not me, not me, not me.
Her. Her. Her. That other woman. Not me. But every day, inside the room, inside the house, the shame grew into a great ugly beast, hostile, and waiting. It festered like the bowels of hell.
I said yes but I meant no. I said yes but I meant NO. The shame grew. The beast growled and snapped its teeth. Sizzling whispers simmered out of the house, in me, of me, for me, against me. I felt muzzled, confined, constricted…empty. Every day, a piece of me died in that house, in that room, in that bed, in that lie. Every time I said yes—the little girl screamed no, no, no. The more I died, the louder her screams got. The pain she brought to the surface was so extreme I thought this is what it felt like to die, and wished I would, quickly. The little girl beat and pressed against my weak wood, weak heart, but I managed to press her down, silence her. It is hard to bear these things, even now, that I face it for what it is, my mind is sifting, sorting and realizing the capacity to which it was able to hold in, confine, and bundle up so much horror, such pain and hurt. I was two people; acting out strange things, controlled by something, someone. A woman on the outside. A torn kite, blood and tears. No wind.
WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) Page 30
