Stitching Up The Seams

Irrational fear.

I have this irrational fear that everyone I love the most will one day leave me. And some part of me - a part that waxes and wanes - believes that I deserve to be alone. That I don’t deserve happiness.

Sorry for the TMI right here, but this is the best example I can think of.

Making love with my partner. Let’s just say that I have never had any problems with sexual pleasure…at all. In the least. I know that’s somewhat rare, and I don’t take it for granted. But one of the most recent times we’ve made love, I ended up curled into a ball afterwards in tears - not a panic attack, thank God, but the belief that my pleasure was undeserved and that I was somehow robbing him of joy.

I know, in my head, that sex is about mutual pleasure, enjoying one another’s body and enjoying one another’s enjoyment. But somehow, that particular time, I felt so unbelievably guilty. Guilty for being happy. Guilty for accepting his love - something I feel so deeply that I do not deserve.

Maybe it’s the teaching I’ve gotten from so many sources that if I’m not good enough in bed or keep my partner sexually satisfied that he’ll leave me for someone else. My mom has actually told me to have sex with him even when I’m suffering tremendous PTSD lest I “lose” him. (To his credit, when I finally worked up the courage to tell him that, he was FURIOUS with her.)

And maybe it’s the questions Mom would ask me throughout my childhood whenever a friend would invite me to their house. “Are you sure they want you there? Are you sure they want to be friends with you?”

That always hurt me so badly. But she was right a lot of times. So many “friends” would let me know in myriad ways that they were better than me and spent time with me only out of pity. Like a childhood best friend who told me that I ought to be grateful for her friendship, because it was only by her popularity that I was no longer tormented in class.

And you know what? She was right - because when she decided that she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore, she instigated games. Games like, “Who can make Stitch angry first?” There were always 4 or 5 players in these games. Doesn’t sound like much - but when you’re in a class of 25, and those 4 or 5 players are the people you’ve spent the past several years believing were the only people in that class who didn’t hate you…well. And when I’d inevitably crack - screaming and running away, or collapsing into a heap in tears - she’d merely laugh and revel in her victory.

Or another friend who invited me to her birthday party in sixth grade…I was so excited. And she didn’t seem happy for me to be at her party, but I couldn’t understand - she’d invited me. Then someone told me that her mom made her invite me so I wouldn’t feel left out.

Not to mention Ann.

And a handful of dearest friends from my old church camp who stopped talking to me when I went to BJU.

And Daniel - who had been my steadfast friend throughout my difficulty with Peter, who talked to me every single day I was at BJU, who grounded me and convinced me that despite the first years of our acquaintance when he wouldn’t stoop to converse with me that he now was the most faithful friend I had - he even stopped talking to me when I got married against his advice.

So when my partner tells me he loves me, he enjoys me, he’s happy with me, he wants to be with me, there’s always part of me that says, “But one day, you’ll get sick of me. And you, too, will leave.”

And there are friends that I have now who have never left me. But my fear is the same with them as it is with my partner. I’m too needy. I’m too clingy. I’m too self-absorbed.

I’m terrified that I deserve to be alone.

But I’m trying so very hard to reject that fear, reject that notion, and really honestly trust that perhaps I’m not the hideous creature that I think I am. That perhaps my partner believes in commitment every bit as much as I do (and when I put it like that, OF COURSE I know that he does).

I am not a sickness. I am not a disease!

I’m just so afraid that I am.

In which relationships are hard and sad.

If you’re unfamiliar with a guy named Joe and what my relationship to him is, you should read these posts: in which I meet Joe, in which I “break up” with Joe (even thought we weren’t dating), and in which Joe emails me after we’ve broken off communication.

You know the whole stages of grief thing? I think I skipped around on the sequence with Joe. I’ve had all of them EXCEPT anger.

Until now.

He’s starting to respond to posts of mine on Facebook and Google+.

Mostly on Facebook, he likes things that I post.

On Google+, however, he send me very long narratives in responses to things. Narratives that took a lot of time and thought.

And it makes me really angry.

There’s no reason to be angry (except for that one time when he was all “egalitarianism is wrong! don’t paint all complementarians with the same brush as Doug Wilson! let’s talk about this (but my way is biblical and you won’t change my mind)!” and I was like, “aw hell no, ignoring you now”). He’s been perfectly nice.

And even before, with everything that fateful summer, I realize that he probably didn’t understand that I loved him and he was probably simply acting as a friend.

So maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m angry that he acts like nothing ever happened, because something DID happen - my heart got broken. And maybe he doesn’t know that.

But he doesn’t really need to know.

It just seems like he wants to be friends again.

And part of me thinks that would be great. We were fantastic friends.

But a bigger part of me doesn’t want to. A bigger part of me wants to seal that part of my life off forever, him included.

There’s also the thing in which I don’t want to get in the way of his relationship with his wife. He and I were best friends for that summer - inseparable, even though states and miles separated us. We got one another in a way that I’ve rarely gotten someone been gotten by someone. (Yay for my partner!)

I just…have never, ever gotten the impression that he has that sort of relationship with his wife. And I still have no idea what she knows of that summer. I like her tremendously…in truth, now, probably better than I like him. And I wish to take no part in causing doubt or pain to her.

WHY ARE THINGS SO CONFUSING.

A love that is stronger than our fear.

For as long as I can remember, there has been a steno pad on the counter at my parents’ house. For the past 18 years, my dad has worked an insanely early shift - 5am til 1pm. So he gets up at 3am, showers, exercises, does his devotions while eating breakfast - and takes time to write my mom a note. It’s not a romantic note, usually. Just going over details of the day - what he’s done to help prepare for dinner, letting her know he started laundry, etc. And somewhere in that note, there is always the sentence “I sure do love you.” Then he’ll gather his things for work, and leave the house around 4 or 4:30.

Mom gets up at 5 and showers, works on laundry, eats breakfast, and puts together things for dinner - and reads Dad’s note. Then she sits and writes him a note of her own, verifying any questions he had in his letter to her, letting him know if there are any deviations to the normal plan happening that day, etc. And she always signs it, “all my love.” When Dad gets home around 1:30, he reads her note, takes a nap, and does whatever it is that she may have asked him to do until she gets home and they can be together.

And so it goes, every weekday. There are boxes of these steno pads in the basement of their house. I remember reading those notes every day to know what we were having for dinner, so I could be prepared (I’m a picky eater…inherited from my dad and also I suspect part of a currently undiagnosed sensory processing disorder). But I’d also inadvertently find things out about me or Eddie - or rather, about how they felt about us. How proud they were of us. How worried they were about us. How they would rearrange their lives for years on end to accomodate basketball practice and games, volleyball practice and games, piano lessons, driving lessons, sleep-overs, choir rehearsals and concerts…Ed’s expulsion from our Christian school, my battle with anorexia and suicidal depression. And consistent within it all was their overwhelming love for us, their undying love for each other.

When we go to visit, sometimes I still read those notes. It’s comforting. And they haven’t changed all that much, even though Eddie and I are married now, even though Dad is dying. Their love is quiet and strong and consistent. They are quiet and strong and consistent.

And they have taught me so much.

Fucked up.

You know the system in which you were raised / indoctrinated in college is fucked up when you seriously consider suicide after having sex.

My now-husband and I started dating November of 2008, had our first kiss within the month, and had sex in January of 2009. Moving quickly? For a Christian couple who believed that sex was the ultimate taboo before marriage (and quite possibly ever), yeah - we moved really quickly. Probably too quickly. But one of the motivating factors was that we planned to get married anyway.

So, let’s make this crystal clear.

We were in a monogamous, committed relationship with one another. There was no coercion on either part. We each gave our wholehearted verbal and non-verbal consent.

And within three days of losing our virginity to one another (what a fucked up phrase!) we BOTH seriously contemplated suicide. He actually tried. I stopped myself from trying because it occurred to me I could be pregnant, and I couldn’t bear the thought of killing our child as well.

Part of what contributed to this despair on my part at least was a message preached by Dr. Jim Berg Nathaniel Pringle in which he stated emphatically that any sexual sin whatsoever committed by a Christian would forever tarnish their relationship with Christ.

My despair escalated when I told my best friend at the time, Ann. Her response was to run and throw up. I’m not kidding.

After we both decided that suicide was not the answer, you know what we decided? We decided we had to get married ASAP, because having sex was fun and it was going to be absolute torment to know how good it was and not be able to until we were married.

So we were going to withdraw from school in the middle of the semester, run off, and get married - because we had sex, and because we thought the Bible said we should (and because we thought it was the only way “to right our wrong” - we actually believed in that stupid stupid phrase “make an honest woman out of her”).

I am angry. I am pissed. I am fucking livid.

I am disgusted with a system that shames me as a woman for my sexuality. I am disgusted with a system that blames me as a woman for “seducing” my now-husband. I am disgusted with a system that would prefer for me to enter a sexual relationship with my eyes closed and a ring on my finger before I know that I possess a body part known as a clitoris that exists basically for the sole purpose of pleasure.

I am disgusted with a system that would teach me for MY ENTIRE LIFE that the most important thing I ever had to offer anyone was this thing called PURITY that was tied inextricably to both my hymen and my ability to repress any sexual desire I ever thought about having.

I am disgusted with a system that thinks that my desire to commit suicide in light of losing my virginity could be considered a natural response. I am disgusted with a system that thinks that I should be forever punished because I was not a virgin when I got married.

I am disgusted with a system that would teach us that “to marry is better than to burn with passion” - when passion was never discussed as anything other than evil and there was no talk of how to actually live in abstinence from sex. I’m also disgusted with the people who read this verse to us, then told us a week later that we didn’t have the maturity to be married. MAKE UP YOUR MINDS.

Come to think of it, I am disgusted with a system that taught abstinence to the point that we didn’t use a condom when we had sex, allowing for the risk of pregnancy to be exponentially higher. And talking to Daniel, and he asked if we used a condom, and told me he would have been ANGRY with Gary if we had because then it would have been pre-meditated! At the time, I thought it was a sweet sentiment. Now I see clearly that it is FUCKED UP. (Edit: I understand where he was coming from, and that he’s (generally) not a misogynistic repressive ass. He meant well. Truly.)

My worth as a woman is NOT tied to my hymen or my sexual appetite. My worth as human is not tied to these things!

I AM NOT DAMNED.

I AM NOT A WHORE.

I AM NOT SHAMEFUL.

AND I NEVER HAVE BEEN.

So why the HELL do I still feel like this sometimes?!

You were my best friend.

We knew that when the verse talking about iron sharpening iron was written, it was written for us.

You encouraged me in my walk with God. We struggled together. We overcame together.

You were there for me after I was assaulted. You told me that it wasn’t my fault. You were the only one who told me it wasn’t my fault.

You were even there for me when I fell in love with a married man and struggled with an emotionally abusive relationship with a professor.

But when the biggest struggle of my life came along, your presence in my life changed.

It was subtle at first. You were less yourself. Or, as I suspect now, you were more yourself - it just wasn’t a part of you I’d ever seen.

You set yourself up as better than me. You told me yourself that I no longer could be trusted to make my own decisions, so you had to make decisions for me.

You made little of my repentance, and made even less of my regrets of not being a virgin. Your entire attitude about my shame was summed up on that car ride, when you looked at me without compassion and shrugged, “Oh, well.”

In fact, mere days before my wedding, you shot me down for being worried about suddenly having a sex life. Because in your mind, I’d done it once so it could no longer be special for me. It was forever going to be a tainted, shameful thing - because I didn’t do things “the right way.”

You were my best friend.

But then you became my judge, jury, and prosecutor.

And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I still want to be friends with you.