A Recent Chronology of Stream Consciousness Journaling, Part I

Wife and I just had a 7 hour talk. Heavy, hard, and even sometimes healing. I think it’s safe to say we are at the beginning of the end. The end of what? Maybe the end of our marriage all together, or maybe just the end of this unhealthy phase our relationship? Only time will tell, but I think we are on a good path forward whatever that brings. - March 14, 2016

I had just returned from a week long visit with my parents, which had been encouraged by both my wife and our marriage counselor, hoping it would make me feel better and re-energized after having just quit my job and dealing with what they saw as homesickness. Funny enough, I did not have a good time on that visit. I was depressed and lonely, and I missed my wife, our cats, and my life in Edinburg. I was also quite apprehensive about the things we were dealing with in counseling, but felt like we were making progress and I didn't want to take any break or give it any space. I did not realize at the time that in fact that is exactly what my wife needed and wanted for herself, and that the space gave her the clarity to make the hard decision she would soon make.

I also had another agenda that week staying with my parents that contributed to my sadness and depression. I had been keeping a very big, dark secret about myself from my wife and essentially from everyone I had known or loved, including my parents. I wanted to work up the courage to speak with my parents that week about this secret, to finally get it out and in the open with them no matter how bad they took the news. Without going into great detail here I will say that my late grandfather (maternal) was a serial predator and child molester. He molested my mother when she was a child for a period of time, the details of which I have never fully been made aware of. To my knowledge he was never jailed or arrested or even investigated. The family kept it a secret and acted as if nothing had ever happened. My mother maintained a seemingly normal relationship with her parents through her adult life and into marriage and becoming a mother herself. 

My grandfather began to molest me, my younger brother Travis, and a neighbor girl I won't name here that was also my age and my best friend. Many of the details are blurry now as I have spent over twenty years trying to forget. Eventually my grandfather was arrested for the abuse of the neighbor girl when we were ten years old. He went to jail for a brief period of time before being released due to poor health and he died from heart failure when I was 13. At no point during his arrest or jail time was the abuse my brother and I suffered ever been brought to light. We were not brave enough to speak up ourselves and had hoped that it would be discovered regardless. It never was. Once he was dead the family moved on. Travis and I buried it deep and tried to move on as well. 

Emphasis on "tried". It was not easy. We both fell into a trap of self-destructive behavior that reinforced the self-loathing and hatred and shame we felt because of what happened to us. Drugs, violence, crime, sexual promiscuity. Manic depression and bipolar disorder. Post-traumatic stress & anxiety. And all this while hitting puberty and those already awkward teenage years. It affected us both in very similar ways, but I became much better at hiding it. Travis spiraled out of control in his late teens and took his own life at the age of 19. The trauma of that terrible tragedy gave me a sliver of hope that I might be able to finally speak up about what happened to us, especially in the face of so many of Travis' loved ones asking themselves "Why?". But again I just buried it deep and tried to move on. 

So coming back to that week I spent away from wife, at her and our counselor's behest. I had not often considered speaking to my parents or anyone else about the abuse, but after having fallen in love with this incredible woman who made me so happy it began to eat away at me that I was not being completely honest with her, was not sharing with her. I was not blind to the friction it caused in our relationship as she had suspected there were things I was not telling her, and I had no reason not to open up to her about this other than my own deep seated self-hatred. I desperately wanted to reach the level of intimacy and honesty that she deserved and I was slowly working my way toward it, but that takes its toll on a person. It took its toll her.

My plan was to finally get it all out in the open with my parents and then return home to tell my wife and head forward together in this. No more secrets. No more hiding. No more lies. I had absolutely no reason to believe that this amazing woman would do anything different than love and accept me as she had already been doing. 

That week away went by and while I did speak with my parents about the current state of my marriage and addressed some their own worries and concerns about us, I was not able to dig out that proverbial skeleton and tell them about the abuse. I returned home and had the 7 hour conversation with my wife that is referenced in the above journal entry, in which I did open up to her about the abuse and about the pattern of secret keeping and self-loathing. I did not know what it would do to our relationship, but I knew that I could not wait any longer and I had to break with at least one bad pattern in my life if I had any hope of salvaging the best thing that had ever happened to me. And in the days following I felt more hopeful and free than I can ever before, sure there was still an inkling of maybe this was "too little, too late" but it was not the predominant feeling I had.