The Kingdom Of Heaven
When I tried to hurt the young man who never had as much as an ill thought towards me, I knew my mind had packed her bags and flown north for the summer. My husband didn’t flinch at these blows of fury, but even in my manic state, my humanity could detect the fear in his eyes. It fed me— no, it fed the predatory animal that was protecting me from my past dangers. Still, the man had the saintly resolution of a Puritan. All he did was put his two big hands on my face, tilt his head, and say my name gently. My demon was struck dumb by the tears in my husband’s eyes.
As much as I ache to be a reformer, a pilgrim in this world of twisted morals and no absolutes, when I lay my head down at night I know I am really the wayward son. I am the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God,” and takes lightly every great mystery of love and of life. Life more abundantly, as it is written.
A measure of wisdom has been given to me in my short 20 years on this green planet; nevertheless, on my sunnier days, in little ways, I deliberately choose ignorance. My childhood was cold in many ways, but for whatever reason, I allow myself the perverted comfort of regressing to reasoning like a child. Maybe because I believe it will get me what I want, when I want it, from the good and honest people around me. My husband, God love him, would walk on coals if it meant I could live a productive and peaceful life with length of days. My own dear parents would do the same— Lord, now that they’re older and settled down, they’d pay anything to see me happy even for a day.
Still, I amuse and pleasure my own mind by walking as one who is without grace. I give myself a little too much slack to deliver jabs and abuse those ones I cherish, but only when I am deeply secure in their kindness, and assured of their intentions towards me.
The good man I’ve been given knows my mind better than I do—he knows when she hungers, when she is filled with overwhelm. So, just like he puts in 10 hour days fill up his little car and take me out to late showings of last year‘s movies, I expect him to provide for my mind’s deepest needs. I was never shown how to care for her; I was taught more about how to neglect her. I fling my every want on him, because I don’t know how to tell if what I want is what I really need. When he suggests what I might be missing in order to thrive, I berate him for trying to micromanage my life.
This is no way to live. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Where I come from, they don’t believe in psychotherapy. I’m not sure I do, either. Marsha Linehan, Confucius, the Buddha, they don’t know what’s good for me. But neither do I. I sure don’t believe in “Quit your blubbering,” because so far, it doesn’t worked. And I wonder if it is possible for me to grow up, or if I missed that boat entirely. As much as I kicked and screamed against moving out of my dark basement bedroom, it didn’t turn back the clock and force my mother and father to raise me the way I deserved.
They are a little more like grown-ups now. They even pretend to like each other sometimes. They quit going to church, but I have heard them praying. I think they may grow up to be fine parents someday. Perhaps within my children’s lifetimes.
Nathaniel tells me we are too young to have babies yet, though he has been a working man and a caretaker to his brother and sister and dogs and horses since the age of 14. The real reason we are childless is so simple, it goes without saying: I am not right in the head, If I was left at home with an inconsolable newborn, after a fortnight of fitful sleep, I would go batty. I would turn myself out to greener pasture. I cannot handle it. It’s not that I never will; it’s that the way people become decent parents is by growing up. And it would take an act of God to grow me up.
There have been acts of God in my life. When my sister was four years old, and I was in middle school, she drowned in a pool with three lifeguards on duty. A stranger, who had gotten CPR certified that very day, saw my baby sister’s purple form floating lifeless from the corner of their eye. She was resuscitated, and she made it when every precious minute ticking by said she shouldn’t have. Eight minutes without breathe testified that she should be brain dead at best. Angels were around my family that day in in the days that followed.
Unfortunately, she was already my father’s favorite before the accident, and though I love the little thing to death to this day, the miracle only solidified her royal status.
I am not bitter, or jealous; I was too old for that then and more so now. But a self-absorbed man has barely enough love for one woman in his life, let alone for a difficult and homely teenage daughter, especially when he has a tiny blonde one.
I still feel guilty to think this way, because my own father’s life is an act of God. When I was a baby and he worked seven days a week, he suddenly lost 30 pounds in just a few weeks. His body was attacking itself. He was sickly for much of my childhood. Many people who knew us then are amazed by the robust, yet aged, man he is now. So I should be more grateful that I grew up with two parents.
These days, I am. I have never been loved so much as I am now. Forgiveness is a balm in the life of a narcissistic abuse survivor, best applied liberally. But time heals all wounds only when they are not not festering with the maggots— controlling friends, partners, and relatives who decide to come out of the woodwork— attracted by that sweet, sickly smell that fresh wounds tend to emit. The kisses of an enemy are deceit.
The day I swung my fists at my gentle husband, I didn’t try to kiss him afterwards. I ran down the gravel driveway and into the road, as scared and exposed as the day I was born. Praise God that Nathaniel pushed aside his every urge to chase me down, and called for help instead. The next morning, when I looked in the mirror in a cold room that was not my own, I wasn’t anywhere to be found. I had hidden far, far away from the nightmare I created from pieces of a pleasant and quiet life I once led. I survived each day by remembering every time I had ever forgiven anyone. Surely if it felt so good, others may forgive me.
When the good man God gave me came to visit a week later, I knew what I had done was unforgivable. I had backed him into a corner, between a wall of the warm place we’d built together from our broken childhoods, and a wall of wisdom and the ways of the world. As principled and fundamental as he had been, a farm boy and a good catechism student, he ignored his Bible teachers’ warnings for to take me as his bride. I didn’t look like a bride, I looked like I wouldn’t even be interested in men. And I had long scars and I laughed too loudly at off-color jokes.
And every one of those teachers was right about me. I was less of a wife now than I was on that hot day in August with our family and closest friends. In fact, now, in the small room with the smooth doorknob, wearing paper clothes and under watchful supervision, I was more of a convict than anything.
Nathaniel’s cheeks were sallow when I saw him, and his hug more boney than it should have been. His eyes held no tears now, but were dry as the air. He didn’t say much, only told a joke comparing nurses and helicopter parents, gave me some pieces of good candy, and pulled a New Testament from his pocket. Then he lay beside me on the thin mattress and read to me about the little boy, and the fish, and the loaves.
I buried my face in his clammy neck, his voice a muffled deep noise, and wished like a thousand times before that we could make a little boy of our own. On that hospital bed, I felt the imaginary child lying between us, warm and soft and quiet. His name was Starling and he looked just like his mom. When I reached out and felt how fragile he was, I recoiled, remembering for the first time the sensation of his father‘s face beneath my fist.
“We can’t have a baby. He will fall from the nest,“ I interrupted Nathaniel’s reading and the present moment.
He gathered me into his arms as my breathing turned to sobs. His voice was barely a whisper, “Yes, my baby, he will.”