Part 4: The Night Everything Changed

The moment my world split into before and after.

This is the hardest part for me to write. I’ve been avoiding it for days. I still have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, knowing what comes next. I still have that urge to run far away from the memories that haunt me. It’s in my nature; it’s the way I used to deal with all of the unpleasant emotions. Just shove them down, pretend they aren’t there, slap a smile on your face.

What I really wish is that I could skip over this part of my story and get to the ending. The part where I start rebuilding my life. The part where I start feeling happiness again.

But I can’t run away from this part. Because I’m done running. Running from your emotions works only as long as your body is able to. But you get exhausted. Everything you thought you were running from catches up to you, even stronger than before.

And I know that this part of my story matters. I know that the pain meant that the numbness was wearing off. That I was coming alive again. The pain was the beginning of my rebirth.

Even though my heart is racing, I will approach this next part of my story with gentleness, grounding myself in the knowledge that I am not the same person that I was five years ago. I am not in that place anymore.

I am safe now.

On that cold, snowy February night, I was not safe. My boys were not safe. And I had no idea, I could not even comprehend, the gravity of darkness we were living in.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Lord delivered me and my children from the pit of hell that night.

It was a Monday, around 6:30p.m. I know almost to the minute exactly what time it was, because I took a selfie with my two boys just moments before.

We were snuggled on the couch, watching Cars 3. Just the three of us. He was downstairs in the basement, in his office. There was a vent in the living room floor, directly above his office, where I could hear the sounds of his virtual Zoom work meeting.

I remember sitting on that couch, counting down the seconds until he was finished. In those months leading up to that night, the time he spent in his office had increased drastically. He was studying for a certification he was working toward, and it was always, just one more hour. Just one more late night.

By that point, I had gotten used to the hours he spent alone downstairs. In a weird, twisted way, I was actually proud of him. I thought he was studying hard, working toward growth, working toward a promotion at work. He wasn’t stagnant.

When I think back to that night, I can almost imagine it from the outside looking in. I see myself, sitting on the couch, one of my boys on each side. I can see the stained, ripped IKEA couch we bought off of Facebook Marketplace for $50. I can see the antique yellow side tables with the gorgeous marble tops I found at an antique store just weeks before.

I see a woman with no voice, a vacant look in her eyes. Feeling trapped, wondering how she would survive the next 20 or 30 years of marriage, if this is how the first seven had felt.

But she was there, on the couch, spending time with her babies. Always. An arm wrapped around each one, a blanket spread over their laps. A heart full to the brim with unconditional love.

And just one floor below, a darkness so thick, it threatened to completely overcome the three of us.

I remember sitting on the couch, and suddenly realizing something.

It was too quiet.

I had subconsciously noticed that the meeting had ended, because I stopped hearing the voices through the vent. I was waiting for those familiar footsteps coming up the basement steps. I couldn’t wait to snuggle next to him. I couldn’t wait for it to be the four of us, like it was supposed to be. When I felt most complete.

But there was nothing.

My intuition was screaming.

I was shaking with fear. I knew, I knew, I knew… but I really had no idea. A normal person could not comprehend, could not imagine in their worst nightmare.

I crept down the basement stairs. I wanted to turn around, I wanted to run out the front door. My body was screaming, no, no, no. Stop.

But I knew I had to keep going, one step at a time.

It felt like thirteen years of silencing my intuition, of going to sleep with my stomach twisted in knots, only to wake up in the morning to a perfectly constructed apology email, all culminating in this one moment in time.

Reaching for the handle of the door… pushing it open…

Images seared into my brain forever, and ever, and ever.

My body screaming: no. no. no. no.

My brain crashing out, rapid firing, circuits breaking. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.

What the hell is happening?????

His hands, reaching for the double monitors, trying to push them down. Away from my eyes. But I already saw.

Numb. Stumbling out of his office, reaching for my phone to call my brother, walking into the corner of the basement, where all of the dusty cardboard boxes lay, right next to the COVID-19 elliptical and weights panic purchase. “Can you please come over? Something really bad just happened.”

“Are you ok? Are you safe?”

“I’m ok, but it’s really bad.”

Crying. SCREAMING. My heart pounding so hard in my chest, my body beginning to hyperventilate, but the boys were upstairs, sitting on the couch, watching Cars 3, and I couldn’t come completely undone, because they were there.

More screaming. Words I regretted in the weeks to come, before I knew there was even more darkness. Words I’m now glad I said, because he deserved every one.

He grabbed his laptop, stuffed it inside his leather workbag. The new one I had bought for him just a few months before on his birthday, the expensive splurge from an Etsy shop overseas, hand-stitched and dyed. Because I was so proud of all his hard work.

He wasn’t even crying. His face was oddly vacant. There was a look of shock in his eyes, but it was one of panic. Like a child being caught with their hand in the cookie jar. There was panic, because he had been caught red-handed.

There was no remorse.

Even then.

There was fear for the repercussions he knew were coming. Fear that he had been exposed. Fear that I saw that side of him he had kept hidden in the shadows for so many years.

He grabbed that leather bag, and he stumbled out the front door.

Right past my boys, sitting on the couch. Right past me, tears streaming down my face.

He didn’t wait for my brother to arrive.

I remember standing on the front step, watching that black Volvo pull out of the parking lot.

I remember turning around, walking back inside.

My boys, only 5 and 2 1/2, sitting on the couch. They had just watched their dad walk out the front door.

Choosing self-preservation over honesty.

Self-preservation over doing the right thing.

My older son, looking at me with concern in his big, blue-green eyes. Too young to fully comprehend what had just happened, but incredibly perceptive and knowing that something was off.

“It’s ok, boys. Everything is ok.”

I walked back onto the couch, reached for the blanket. Swallowed my tears, swallowed up the pain, wrapped my arms around them, even tighter than before, sat on that couch, and watched the rest of Cars 3 with them.

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This was the hardest thing I’ve ever written. Thank you for trusting me with this part of my story and for coming alongside me.

Part 5 is coming soon.

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