My Semicolon Scar
To Dust you Shall Return…
These words echo for me just after Ash Wednesday. There was a time when I tried to return to dust. Depressed, abandoned, and in despair- the only love declared to me being one that served to isolate me.
I have this semicolon scar on the inside of my right wrist. It was given to me by my kitten when I tried to hold him too tight. My second grade self grasping for the easiest love that I could. These days, it feels as if it were a foreshadowing.
This is a story I’ve wanted to tell many times, but have not had the courage to do so. Lent seems to be a proper time to start. I know that this can’t be told all in one sitting, but I will try to make some sense of it in the telling, coming back to the details in later posts.
Trigger warning now, if it hasn’t been apparent, for suicide attempt and depression- but that’s not the real point of the story.
It should have been a very happy time in my life, and in many ways it was. I looked for material signs of security at twenty-two years old, heartbroken from a breakup with a law student and terrified of being hurt that way again. Security was what I craved and I thought I had it when a 3.5 carat platinum ring was presented to me. Some kind of solid ground to lay my feet on and a warm bed at night. But even with all of that, my world around me was crumbling.
In what should have been my last semester of school I had horrible grades and a really serious health scare, along with a fiancé who demanded so much of me- and a recommendation from him that I start anti-depressants.
In the fog of memories from twenty years past, I’m not sure if the medication really was what sent me into the tailspin of oblivion- or if it was simply the pressure of a life that was feeling unfinished and unfulfilled. A man six years and a lifetime of experiences my senior, already married once before, and what he expected of me: a performance I wasn’t ready for, I can see that now.
What I do so clearly remember is taking some prescription pain medicine- leftover from an earlier procedure- and sitting in the bathroom, his dog beside me. Him coming in and asking if I had, going to the hospital and drinking a mixture of Pepto Bismal and charcoal- otherwise my stomach would have to be pumped. Spending the night there and awaking to the mother of some kids I had babysat, crying and saying for me to never do that again… she worked there.
I remember having to go to another hospital in a police van- it was illegal to do what I did. The shame that surrounded my moment of crisis would loom for nearly twenty years- as every moment he had to use it against me he did. “You want to leave me? But I saved your life!”- repeated itself often and wasn’t this love? This must be love, it felt like love, I was in love- so in love. Even so recently in court- despite it happening prior to our marriage and legally not applicable to events after. His lawyer asking me did I try to kill myself just before calling me a whore, clarifying to avoid a claim of libel and defamation- my lawyer telling his that his client should stop calling me a whore and the other lawyer’s response “well isn’t she one?”, one would think it a disbarrable offense.
I remember in the three day span that I was gone, resurrected from potential death, my sorority sisters turned against me. It’s still unclear why some fifty plus twenty year old women declared me their enemy… sisterhood be damned. Some of them even work in higher ed now, I wonder how they advise those students with their own mental health crisis? I’ve always thought it made me better able to identify with my own students and their own struggles- but one cannot put that on an Individual Faculty Review form. There’s no way to quantify that kind of experience, to make it take the place of a PhD. Imagine if it could: “year end review- Professor Wilkins relates well to students and is empathetic to their needs because she wants to give the help she did not get”. There’s so much we did not know twenty years ago.
I remember him visiting me at the hospital with his mother- my own parents didn’t know. I’m not even sure if they had tried to call me, my cell phone was locked away.
In this season I am reminded that I felt stuck in a perpetual Lent for so long, burned down and resurrected over and over again… the Phoenix only rising so far. I can remember being told that I was going to Hell- and I knew that I was in it. Getting married and knowing that this wasn’t for me, trying to tell others that this wasn’t what I wanted and being told I only had cold feet. Again and again him saying but he saved me. This must be love, it felt like love, I was in love- so in love. Later, after being married, that same man telling me I was not worth living and why didn’t I just go ahead and do it again already? This must be love, it felt like love, I was in love- so in love. The only thing stopping me were those two innocent sets of eyes looking up at me, their arms around my neck.
Sitting in the great Gothic church alone one Sunday during the Bishop’s visit- my small children playing in the nursery. A sermon that was preached and the weight feeling to physically lift: God loved me. It was a revelation to be sure, as he had convinced me that I was not worthy of the love of God and Hell was for sure Mine. Slowly, ever so slowly and with the help of good therapy… I began to come out of it. Getting the courage to leave not just once but many times over- did you know statistically it takes women an average of seven times to leave their abusers? I made it out, technically, in two- but would have to extricate myself in other ways.
It would be this slow return to church that would eventually bring me out of it. Talking first to Father Hal, and other times to Father Ben. Later Father Bryan.
Seven years ago I wrote the following:
“I am still Doubting Thomas personified. I need to place my fingers in the flesh of the risen Christ before I can sing my Alleluias again. I waver between that feeling of great doubt and one of great faith when I see so many around me suffering. Knowing that God is here for me and has raised me above so much and while I never doubt his love for me- I cannot tell someone else they should not. What does that make me?
God’s love was made tangible in the death of his only Son, our Christ. I know this. But I cannot tell someone who suffers great loss this. I cannot slap them in the face of their grief with something that I know to be true, when there is so much hurt.
Christ’s rising is not a promise that everything will be ok, but that we are strengthened in his love.
Perhaps that is the point, that when others are grieving- those of us who are stronger are simply meant to fall with them in an embrace. Ready when they are. But also not allowing others to forget, even as our headlines fade.”
For me, what I have gained over these past several years is that my pain was meant to bring me to this place. I never want to tell someone that everything happens for a reason, but I do cling to it for me- for my story.
So what does this have to do with Lent? Glad you asked. In a previous post, my friend Craig reflected that “Sometimes our journeys down these dark and winding roads are sudden, unplanned trips that take us into places we never intended. Maybe even places of pain and sadness and even hopelessness and despair. I have been down both of these roads, as many of us have. One of my most difficult trips into the wilderness lasted for years, and there were times when it felt dark and miserable and endless. But the self-knowledge I gained and the resulting steps I took completely changed my world and my daily actions, and actually gave me a whole new purpose in life, pointing me in a direction that I never could have predicted or even imagined possible for myself.” I’d say this is the same for me. My journey, coming back from my own personal hell, and realizing God did not hate me but in fact LOVES ME- despite all of my own perceived shortcomings… that to me is the story of coming out of Lent. (This must be love, it felt like love, I was in love- so in love.) I sometimes, well often actually, question the wisdom of social media prophets and convenient interpretation of scripture… but this Instagram post sticks with me:
This is an Instagram post that stays with me, and I would agree with it’s interpretation. Even just a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright spoke in the Bishop’s podcast that I listen to about her own journey in this. Hearing the testimony of others also gives me the courage to speak up.
The semicolon tattoo is often used by suicide survivors to show that their story isn’t over. My scar is deeper than a man-placed ink, and my journey has brought me further than I could have expected.
This past year has accelerated my journey in a way that I could never have predicted, finding myself in the Cathedral on Here I Am Day, again for my older kids Confirmation, finally finding the conviction I had craved for so long: “I was meant to work through these things, that doesn’t mean God allowed abuse towards me because I don’t think that necessarily… but God gave me the tools to get through it. Even when I thought I was abandoned, I was carried. Even when I thought I was crying alone, there was a shoulder for me…. For the first time I felt that conviction I had craved for nearly forty years. Forty years- mirroring the forty days and nights. We are, after all, in the middle of Lent- absent of our hallelujahs. But I found mine, my hallelujah came in the Cathedral of St. Phillip- one week after Here I Am day.”
Sharing this is an act of unburdening- of trying to help others- but more importantly… it taking away the power it has over me. Of the shame I’ve been made to feel for so many years. I’ve hinted at it before, namely here, but had not outright said it.
A year after Here I Am Day I am still here, further rooted in the conviction- of knowing that this pain has had a purpose. It has been burned down, the ashes formed on me, and perhaps at next year’s Ash Wednesday I’ll start having them placed not just on my forehead- but also inside my right wrist… becoming one with the scar. This is love.
