Two Years From Now….

“As we go on our pilgrimage and the song of sorrows plays in our lives, we must be reminded not to serenade our days with regrets—-and refuse to make it the melody of our lives” – Dodinsky

In August of 2013, Daniel* said to me “Two years from now your life is going to be different.  You’re going to find a man who loves you, you will have a new life, and things aren’t going to be as bad as they are right now.”  He was right.  Daniel * was my imaginary escape from my marriage and was trying to love me by giving me hope.  I didn’t believe him, but he was right.  He is still a friend and continues to give me hope by proving to me love does exist.  He is now married with a baby and couldn’t be happier, and by watching his happiness unfold, I have hope that my own truly does exist.

But where am I now?  The two year anniversary of the assault is September 29.  There isn’t a day I don’t think about it.  There isn’t a day it doesn’t enter into my mind at the most inconvenient times.  The pain isn’t as fresh.  The flashbacks aren’t as intense.  The anxiety doesn’t throw me to the ground like an apple from a tree.  But I can’t let go.  It is a monster in my head that never leaves my side.  The event isn’t exactly what hurts me still.  It’s the remembrance of the feelings of isolation.  The feelings of being imprisoned in my own head.  It is the fear that Daniel* wasn’t right.

But overall, I am happy.  I am in a year long relationship with someone I adore and who treats me in a way I have never been treated.  I have a new life.  I have the highest paying job I have ever had, my own health benefits, friends who I can truly believe are real, and confidence I never in my life had.  Yet my monster still lingers.

Mike* still tells the world of my trespasses and convinces people that I spread lies that he raped me.  I feel paralyzed in these words.  I feel without a voice much like when he attacked me.  My voice choked up inside and I wasn’t strong enough to stop him or to cry out for help.  And at times I still feel just as weak.  So I go to the gym to lift heavier.  Work harder.  Be better.  But I am still so weak.  At times I feel the pain of entrapment piercing through my skin into my heart.  So I drink alcohol to numb my skin.  Numb my mind.  Help me to not feel the anxiety.  I am still so hurt.  At times I still feel so silenced.  So I write a song to hear my own words externalized.  To hear my truth come out.  To break free the chains of PTSD.  But I am still so muted.  At times I feel the self-hatred consume me like a fire.  It is hot and it burns.  So I choose to empathize with the world.  I give more of myself to those around me and work harder at being a better me.  But I still sometimes hate myself.

It’s been two years and I am better.  Even with the loss and the pain and the monster that lives in my head, I am better.  Even with the feelings while remembering the isolation and feeling like I am eternally trapped, I am better.  I am free.  And perhaps freedom always comes with a price.  I cautiously walk forward in my life, my relationships, and in my head, looking at every corner preparing to be trapped again.  But I am free.  At times freedom brings me to my knees in sorrow and gratitude.  Knowing life wasn’t done with me yet and I can make a new life escalates my soul.  Yet remembering the years I felt trapped and abandoned, isolated from my friends, and codependent on another person brings a deep sorrow.  As the anniversary approaches, my emotions are fragmented.  I feel everything and nothing all at once and the dichotomy of my inner life begins to play out in my externalized emotions.  I am trying to keep it together, and I am trying to not to let anyone see these ups and downs.   This isn’t me, yet it is.  It’s who at times I have become because of what he did to me two years ago.  Perhaps two years from now, my life will be different.

Preserving The Sanctity of Marriage

Gay marriage started to become legal when I was still deep within the walls of religion.  Though I knew the belief held by those in my group, I secretly cheered on each state that passed it into law.  I never saw how it affected the sanctity of marriage, as it had no bearing on my own.  But over and over I heard the rhetoric of what it does to America.  In my heart, but not with my words, I called bullshit.

During the final stages of my divorce is when I began to truly become outraged and heartbroken that the LGBT community were being treated so unfairly with being denied the right.  My heart broke knowing that marriage for gay and lesbian couples was still an unattainable goal.  It broke my heart because I knew my “sin” was worse than theirs.  Jesus spoke so many times against divorce.  Not so much for homosexuality.  Yet here I was, with the freedom to leave my spouse.  Here I was with the freedom to marry again (to a man) if I chose.  And here I was, able to do that a hundred times over and yet it was not even possible for gays to do it once.  It was not fair!  It was not just!  So as SCOTUS made its ruling this past week, I rejoiced as an open ally to a community I have for years hid my support of.

Though I cannot know fully the struggle of that community, I experience it in part by being divorced.  The same group that denounces them, denounces me – but oh so passive aggressively in comparison.  I can’t count the amount of times I have seen a “clever” meme float down on my FaceBook feed about how people don’t fall out of love because love is a choice.  Or how love never gives up.  Or how though marriage is hard, you always fight for it.  It is a very passive way to tell those that ended a marriage that they weren’t strong enough.  That they didn’t fight enough.  That they gave up.  I can tell you that the people that would say that have only experienced bad times in a good marriage.  They have never experienced bad times in a bad marriage.  Those two things are a world of difference.  Bad times in a bad marriage are like being in a prison underground.  You find hiding places in your own mind to escape because the mantra of “love never gives up” invades every hole in your soul.  Even good times in a bad marriage cannot even compare to bad times in a good marriage.  The good times are like a festering wound that is always on the verge of healing yet continues to ooze the puss of infection.  The memes about gay marriage, however, are much more overt and hatefilled.  Though they don’t directly relate to me, they make my heart sick.  I can only imagine what it feels like for those it is directed at.

But the good news is, the sanctity of marriage was not destroyed when gay marriage was legalized.  Nor was it destroyed when I divorced.  The sanctity of marriage was held as more sacred.  Both of those things give an open door to more love in this world.  Because I was able to divorce, I am legally free to marry again.  One day I want to do just that.  It is because I hold marriage to be so sacred, I will sanctify it when I remarry.  The marriage I was in was toxic at its core.  Even at its best, it was a cancer to everyone involved.  Because I hold marriage and love so highly, I cannot accept what I had as marriage.  For the sake of its sanctity, it had to end.  Gay marriage, on the other hand, is just another celebration that love exists.  Sure there will be many bad relationships that end in divorce involving homosexuals, BUT there will be that many more good ones.

Since being divorced, I have introspectively looked at what I believe marriage truly is beyond the legal benefits.  The only ways I can define it is this….  It is the strong love between two people who choose to commit their lives to one another.  It is giving and taking and sometimes not at the same time.  It is communication in its own language that creates understanding and peace.  It is forgiving and asking for forgiveness.  It is caring for one another in the darkest times.  It is an attraction that goes beyond youth and beauty but deep into the soul.  It is knowing even the worst days together are better than the best apart.  It is honesty.  It is commitment.  It is a shared goal of life.  It’s unity in difference.  It’s compromise.  It’s inspiring one another to be a better version of themselves.  It knows no gender, no race, no past mistakes.  It only knows love.

From the Other Side of the Cage,

Jae

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself (Hating Yourself Leads to Hatred)

Never confuse self-love with ego, the two are entirely different.  A big ego requires a person to think they are better than others and will put others down in order to keep that perception.  Self-love means you are your own best friend and that you love, accept, consider, encourage, care for and believe in yourself.  Through that, you are able to do that for others even indirectly by inspiring them to do the same.  To be grateful for the gift of a lifetime means to love it…to love you.

-Doe Zantamata

This past week I ran a mile in 9 minutes and 15 seconds.  I have been going to the gym for months and when I first started it was about 12 and a half minutes. I go to the gym between 2-4 times a week and one way my hard work can be seen is in my mile run. It’s one of the first things I am truly proud of. It’s something I can say “I did that”.

In the church it was rare to take credit for any accomplishments. Credit is given to God for all things. My hard-earned 9 min 15 second mile would be attributed to God’s glory and strength. I was the weak one, and God was the strong one. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is commonly used for sport and fitness achievements. Despite me putting in hours of cardio and strength training, He would be the one who would get all glory for it. It would be by His power and strength that I could achieve anything. Even if I stated that I was the one who did it, it was by the inspiration of God so He again would always get the credit.

However, on the flip side, all sin and evil would be from me.  The sins I committed were because of the wickedness in my heart. All good things belong to God, and all bad belong to me.  I strongly believe we should take responsibility for our mistakes, but we should also take credit for our successes. The church teaches that we are wretches. That we are weak and born riddled with sin. There is nothing in our power to make us clean. Nothing we can do to be better. Our sin will always be before us. Jesus offers a way to be right. To be worth value. To be good. But our worth is not even our own then. It still is God’s. It is only Jesus in us that we have worth. At our core we are still worthless.

I always struggled with self-esteem, and this way of thinking only forged self-hatred deeper into my heart. I accepted the monster in the mirror as truth. Anything good in me I accepted as from The Lord. Outside of Him I was nothing and never could hope to be anything. So Jesus became my rock. My deep desire to be of value kept my heart clinging to a cross that promised my worth because of the bloody Jesus living inside of me.

This bloody Christ was mutilated and destroyed because of me. My sins. My mistakes. My wrongs that at times I didn’t even know were wrong. His blood spilled to the ground because I was not good enough and there was no way I could ever be. It doesn’t matter that at the depths of my being I would never want another man, let alone God, to suffer due to my behavior and mistakes. In my heart that is not fair but that doesn’t matter. I am still a wretch in the sight of God and in the sight of man. Never good enough.

To love your neighbor as yourself is almost ironic. We are taught to hate ourselves. Though it’s never stated that way, the implications of this lifestyle lead you down the road of self-hatred. You are always striving to be holier (despite the doctrine that salvation is by faith alone, not deed). You are to take up your cross, crucify your fleshly desires – which are not always technically “sinful” – and walk as Jesus did. You must become less and He must become more. All your desires must be for His glory and you are only allowed to desire things from Him. From your career choice, to family planning, to finding a spouse, to your ministry “calling”, your ambitions had to originate from God and be placed in your heart from the Father only. If it is from your own imagination you should not pursue it. It is considered worthless and depending on whom you talk to, disobedient.  In addition, you are to hate yourself by never truly being satisfied with yourself as a person. You are to hate yourself by continually engulfing yourself in the shame cycle of sin and repentance. So loving your neighbor means we can treat them as the wretch they are because we are just as wretched. Sure, it’s not overt, but it’s there. Love to many in the faith is yelling and preaching scripture at sinners (or even saints who are sinning). Love is forcefully encouraging holiness at all costs – whether by pounding scripture over the person’s head, publicly shaming/shunning sin and those who sin, or continuing to enforce this way of thinking by biblical repetition of key verses about holiness. Love is reminding people that despite their shameful self, God loves them. However, it all comes back to the disgustingness of humanity. Even the best of the best would search themselves over and over for sin so they could pound one more nail into their maimed Messiah. Yet the bible clearly defines love differently. It says love is kind. Love is patient. Love is long-suffering. It doesn’t envy or boast. It’s not rude or self-seeking. It always hopes, always protects, and always perseveres.  I believe many in the faith cannot show this type of love because they cannot love themselves.

I do not say all this to say that faith doesn’t have a purpose. The message of Christ still has meaning and depth to me. However, I have begun to cling to His message being that of love and acceptance. Not because I did the right things or prayed the right prayer or believed the right doctrine. My faith struggles because I do not know what truth is anymore.  There has been too much doublespeak in my ears for years that I am breaking all I’ve been told, all I’ve believed, and all I knew into shattered pieces.  All that remains for me from scripture is love.  The way Jesus treated people is much different from many in the faith. If you dissect Jesus’ interactions with individuals, He never pounded righteousness over people’s heads. He did not quote every line of scripture He could remember and try to make it fit to a particular person’s sin. He encouraged righteousness but loved and showed love whether or not people chose righteousness. He didn’t belittle people’s worth, but He loved with or without their acceptance of Him. If you begin to rip apart each individual interaction He had, He treated each person as an individual.  His love and approach varied from person to person because Jesus recognized the beauty and uniqueness of each life.  I have grown to believe many of His followers try to wrap everyone up into this box where we are all the same so we get treated the same.  That is not love.  Spewing off the same rhetoric over and over to the world is not showing love.

It’s only been since leaving the church that I’ve finally learned to really love my neighbor as myself because I finally learned to love myself. Sure, I make mistakes. And no, I’m not perfect. But my mistakes don’t define me anymore than my accomplishments do.   My sins don’t hold me captive in a constant pit of shame.  I don’t believe the same about religion and I don’t try to be holier at all costs. I no longer yearn for the far off day when I will be complete and perfect in God’s kingdom. …but I accept myself for who I am in this moment and finally believe that I am of value as I was created.  And gosh darnit….I…me…myself…moi earned that 9:15 minute mile!!!!

From The Other Side of the Cage,

Jae

The Power of Christ Compels You (Modern Day Deliverance and Exorcism in the Church)

“And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits.” – Mark 6:7

A few weeks ago I was watching the documentary show called “Taboo” on Netflix, and I put on the episode about demons and devils.  This episode profiled a Christian man who was self-proclaimed demon oppressed.  What took place as the episode progressed brought back a flood of memories from my time spent in church and triggered a panic attack. The episode exposed how Pentecostal Christians deal with demons.

Mike* and I left for Bible College in the year 2006.  This college was fairly small, strict, and unaccredited.  Those doing the Lord’s work didn’t need accreditation.  There were only Bible classes – each held only once a year.  The entire student body in your year attended together.  The first semester we attended, one of the classes was about deliverance.

For those of you not familiar with this term, it is essentially the Protestant version of an exorcism.  You did not need a priest to conduct one, only a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.  There was no holy water or anything that you might see in the movies, but rather much prayer.

During the semester the class learned the techniques and skills needed to perform a deliverance.  The gist of the class was that demons are all around.  Both Christians and non-Christians alike can fall prey to one.  Though Christians could not be “possessed” they could in fact be “oppressed”.  I honestly never quite understood the difference.  When a demon manifested itself on a believer, it was very similar to what has been commonly described as a possession.  Behavior would change as well as you might experience shaking, writhing, spasms, and other physical responses as the demon fought within you.  Demons are attracted to sin.  If you allowed any sin in your life, even accidental, you opened the door to Satan and his workers.  Once you open the door, demonic forces have legal rights to your personhood.  Therefore, one of the main lessons one can learn from the class was to avoid sin at any cost.

Towards the end of the semester our teacher, Dr. Rogin*, informed us we would be practicing a deliverance session.  We were finally able to get some hands on training in this exciting and powerful area of spiritual warfare.  But who was to be delivered?

The day of the deliverance sessions, Dr. Rogin* named symptoms of demonic oppression.  He said that if anyone exhibited any of the symptoms to raise their hands.  For a great majority of the questions, both Mike* and I raised our hands.  In retrospect, many of those “symptoms” were actually symptoms of depression.  Some examples were things like thoughts of self-harm, difficulty sleeping/bad dreams, outbursts of anger/sadness, feelings of worthlessness, etc.  One of my major symptoms was that since a child I suffered from bad dreams and night terrors.  But as the list came to its end, Dr Rogin* made his choices.   Mike* and I were of the lucky few in need of deliverance.

We got separated into groups – probably about 10 per group.  Each group had one person with demonic oppression and the remainder would perform the deliverance.  The deliverances began simultaneously within each group.  We were seated in circles and all eyes of my group were on me. The person leading the session, Miranda*, was a little experienced in this arena from previous churches she’s attended.

I remember feeling really sick to my stomach, and I began to shake.  Miranda* accused me of unforgiveness, and I had to come clean and repent of this sin.  I did not feel that I was guilty of this sin, but figured she knew better than me because she was using the Holy Spirit to guide her.  My teeth chattered and it became difficult to swallow.  I talked uncontrollably about my pains and emotions.  Dr. Rogin* came by as words escaped my mouth and told Miranda* not to let me continue to talk because I was distracting from the purpose – to remove the demon.  My heart was in my chest as about 9 sets of eyes pierced into my soul.  I began to cry.  With great authority, small framed Miranda* commanded the demon to leave me.  The group prayed in tongues around me as this young girl asserted her dominion over the evil spirit.  I grew sicker and sicker as this continued.  The fear was taking over my body, but I convinced myself that it was the demon.  Finally, she said it left, and at the time I believed I felt it leave.  Looking back, I believe this experience was a panic attack, and it was coming to an end.  I believe the duration of the session was a psychosomatic response to the charade around me.

I can truthfully say that after that day, I did not have night terrors again.

However, after that day, I felt humiliated.  I felt ashamed.  I felt as if everyone saw within my soul and I was exposed as the monster I was.  I felt less than.  I tried to pretend everyone forgot about that day, but each time I looked into any of their faces, I knew they remembered.

Watching “Taboo” a few weeks ago brought me back to that day in 2006.  I’ve experienced flashbacks and reoccurring panic attacks due to the sexual assault and this was almost symptomatically identical.

I believe this event was a trauma in and of itself and one of the things I push under the carpet in order to forget.  What was done to me in that class was not in any way loving or Jesus-centric.  What was done was to show an authoritarian and isolating way in which we must live or “something bad might happen”.  Those attitudes and behaviors contribute to the constant fear that many Christians try to instill in themselves and others.  There is no boogie man out there attempting to get to us at every turn.  Perhaps evil does exist, but to fear it to this extremity contradicts their own doctrine.  Jesus is all-powerful.  He seals and protects His people with the blood He shed at Calvary.  This blood covers a multitude of sins.  To believe it doesn’t, contradicts the whole premise of who and what Jesus was.  Yes Jesus cast out demons, but I don’t recall it being like I experienced.  He reacted to what was happening around him.  He did not list off symptoms to try to spotlight the infected.  He didn’t pull out a believer in Him and proceed to humiliate him.  He didn’t accuse the possessed of their sins.  He usually said a very short phrase in love and restored those broken souls.

After that day I feared another deliverance session so I kept my mouth shut and attempted to behave to perfection to avoid another demonic oppression.  Despite flying out of that cage of fear and isolation, that old way of thinking still sometimes crawls back into the vacated prison in my head.

From the Other Side of the Cage,

Jae

Wives, Submit to your Husbands (Part 3: The Aftermath)

After Mike* sexually assaulted me, everything that I was as a person died.  There were no more hopes, dreams, goals, likes, dislikes.  Just pain.  And shame.  The next couple days after the “incident” I realized I had 3 choices, all of which ended in death.  I was to either commit suicide because the pain was too great, I was to leave him and lose everyone and everything, or I was to stay like I had for the past several years and pretend like everything was alright.  All were a form of death.  At first I tried to pretend.  But fear swept my body.  I still believed it was my fault.  If I hadn’t have had the online affairs, if I could have just found some place inside my heart to submit, if I could have been a better wife then that wouldn’t have happened.  I couldn’t submit, and I was terrified it would happen again.  I also couldn’t bare the thought of losing everyone. My choice was made.

It was Tuesday, October 1, 2013.  I had just finished my nightly shower that always took me too long.  It was the only place I could hide to cry.  My mind was consumed with what happened and the fear that it was going to happen again.  I remember my world collapsing around me.  I was dizzy, sick, and weak.  My legs became like jello, and I dropped to the bathroom floor.  I stared at the details of the newly wood tiled floor of the bathroom.  Tears soaked the ground and I could barely see straight.  I remembered where the razor blade that I use to trim my hair was.  The straight razor gives it such a nice texture, and so when my bangs needed a little trim I kept it with the rest of my beauty care supplies.  With all the energy I had left in me, I reached for it.  The cold blade pressed against my wrist and I prayed for the courage.  I couldn’t go on anymore.  My world was closing in, and there was no other way.  If I left him, I would be a sinner forever.  I could never be right before the God I loved again.  There is no amount of blood on my beautiful Christ that would cleanse my unrepentant sin of divorce.  I couldn’t submit to Mike* either.  Still no blood could cleanse my sin.  I don’t know what stopped me.  Maybe it was a brief thought of Daniel*.  We were still friends and he would never know that I died.  Maybe it was the thought of my parents cleaning the mess.  I didn’t want to burden them.  Maybe it was the fact that I knew the shame of my transgression would come to the surface.  My reputation would be ruined even in death.  Or maybe it was the drifting thought of my sweet little dog.  Despite the monster I saw in the mirror, she seemed to love me.  I would be abandoning her when she never once in her life abandoned me.

I don’t know how, but I got up off the floor.  I wiped away the tears and put cold water on my face in attempts to hide my pain.  I left that bathroom floor as dead as I would have been if I stayed on it.  I went to our room and hoped he was asleep.

The next few weeks were kind of a blur.  I had just started a new job and had to go in each day pretending to be alive and okay.  I had an hour lunch break, which I used to go to my car and cry every day.  I allowed myself the hour and then put the mask back on.  I began talking online again, but it was different this time.  I didn’t enjoy it.  I just needed to talk and I didn’t care how.  Some conversations got sexual and some didn’t.  I remember I talked to a girl through an app called “Whisper” that allows you to tell secrets.  I posted my secret of what Mike* did.  She tried to convince me it wasn’t my fault. She said it didn’t matter what I had done, no one has a right to do that to another person.  “But he is my husband”.  Her response was that it was not okay even then.  She tried to convince me to get help but I wasn’t ready.  I still felt the weight of my shame like bricks dragging me into the depths of the ocean.  All I could see was the monster in me.  Only this time this monster had no hope for salvation.  No hope that God hears our prayers.  And no hope that I would get out of this.

I went to one more worship band practice after the “incident”.  I put on my mask and played the piano as I always have.  Only this time my song was dead too.  I remember sitting in practice, and realizing I had no more songs left to sing to the Jesus who had once captivated my very existence.

Still I was chatting with guys via text.  Again not all were even sexual.  Mike* was still snooping and found out through the online bill, numbers I was in contact with.  He began to call and harass these guys who had no idea what was happening.  Mike* went through every bit of my online messages including Facebook, email, and text messages.  He was looking for proof for his suspicions.  He even joined a service in which you type in a telephone number and are given all the info about the person it belongs to.  I found that out through our online banking statement.  He finally confronted me.  My response was “I had no one to talk to after what you did to me!”  He acted shocked.  But shortly after his surprise he said “I did not know I was pushing boundaries.  I was just trying to rekindle the fire”.  I couldn’t take it anymore.  We decided to separate.  October 18, 2013 he moved out.

We began couples counseling on Halloween of that year.  It was a year ago today as I type this rough draft.  How things have changed.

Many sessions went by, and at first I was blamed for our problems in almost all of them.  I was almost comatose from fear and depression.  It finally came out that he sexually assaulted me.  At that time I couldn’t even use that terminology.  I called it “that night” or “that thing” or “the incident”.  He did not deny it, but made it seem less of a deal than it was.  Our couple’s counselor finally told me I was having panic attacks and was highly depressed and that I needed to seek individual counseling.  I procrastinated but finally did because I got sick of being harassed by her to do so.

On my first night of individual counseling, I was told that if I did not have a job the recommendation would be to be placed into intense inpatient care.  I didn’t realize I was that bad, but looking back I don’t know how I even made it out of bed.  I was diagnosed with Major Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I still felt such shame about what I had done and how the assault was my fault.  Through many months of counseling, I began to get my life to somewhat “normal”.  It wasn’t until about June of 2014 that I began to really crawl out of the worst of my depression.  My therapist calls what happened “rape” but I still can’t utter that word because there was no penetration.

In February 2014 we made the decision to divorce.  By “we” I mean me.  Even in that he took no responsibility to make a decision.  The weight of that sin will forever be on me.  Mike* recently came out as an atheist and spends part of his time trying to convince others to be the same.  I have taken a different approach.  I think faith is amazing.  But my faith is different than it used to be.  The Jesus I once loved with my whole heart does not exist anymore.  He might still be out there in this vast universe, but he doesn’t reside in my heart like he once did.  Sometimes there’s an echo of the words He used to speak in my ear, but as I turn to look up at His beautiful face, He is like a ghost.  Scripture still haunts me as well, yet there’s so much I believe to be true in it.  Love for one.  But as Scripture becomes like a phantom, I recognize more and more the abuse of it.  Much of how it’s used binds people into prisons….into cages….and caged birds sing hoping for a taste of the freedom it promises but never fulfills.

Despite what Scripture says, I cannot and will not submit to that.  I did not submit that night because to do so would have meant binding myself deeper in the prison of a misogynistic system that gives no hope of true freedom.  Though I did not know it that night, not submitting to him was a symbol of me turning the key to unlock the door of my own prison.  The caged bird died that night and after what feels like eternity, resurrected to her natural design….flying free.

From the Other Side of the Cage,

Jae

Wives, Submit to Your Husbands (Part 2: The Incident)

**TRIGGER WARNING…. this blog entry contains depictions of sexual assault

These online affairs went on for about a year and a half before I was caught.  I was not very sneaky or careful, but it took that long for Mike* to get the courage to investigate.

We went to the beach on a mini vacation on Labor Day in 2013.  Things had gotten really bad between us and I began retreating more and more to my fantasy world.  It had been a couple of months since we even really talked about mundane things – my world was completely silent.  To fill the silence I talked to men even on our mini vacation.  For some reason, on our last day at the hotel, I left my cell phone on the bed while I took a shower.   I didn’t have it locked because I didn’t anticipate anyone going into it.  After I got out from the shower, Mike* was gone.  I figured he went back outside to do another hour or so of skateboarding like he was accustomed to.  For some reason I looked at my phone and received a text message from him.  He found out.  He saw my text messages.  I had sent and received racy pics and video in some of the interactions.  He saw them all.  I was mortified.  Other text messages popped up from Gina* – the pastor’s wife – asking if I was ok.  I had no idea how she could know.  My stomach sunk….the Holy Spirit must have told her.  But logic came over me, and I checked Facebook.  He posted cryptic statuses of my transgressions to the world.  It was over.  Everything I worked so hard to hide…it was over.  A part of me felt sick, another part relieved, and yet another part terrified.  Where would I go?  What would I do?  He finally came back to the room and we had our first fight EVER.

On our way home (and back to the beach after reconciling some) we fought.  We came clean with a lot of feelings.  We agreed to try to make things work.  He took the Facebook status down, and we were back at the beach to meet up with his family pretending like everything was ok.  Inside I knew it wasn’t.  I was still unhappy.  I didn’t believe things would change.  And now I had to get rid of my fantasy – the only place that I could truly live.

I told the guys I had been talking to on text apps that I couldn’t continue to sext or flirt or send pics.  They understood as all of them knew what was going on in my life with Mike*.  We continued to chat as friends; at least I still had that to feel less alone.  I had to hide that I was chatting as friends because I knew if he found out, something terrible might happen.  When one of my longest friends/flirtees texted me later that week via normal text (I had eventually given my number to a very select few), I was accused of being back to my old tricks.  This person was actually more of a friend than someone I was sexual with, and I was trying to explain all that was going on.  Mike* saw the text message count via our bill and accused me of disrespecting him.  I was ashamed of myself.  I hated myself more than I had ever before.  I couldn’t even look at Mike* because of the shame.

About a month later Mike* snooped through all my emails and what not to find more “evidence”.  He found old chat logs via yahoo messenger from when I first began my affairs.  He accused me again and told me I was doing nothing to restore our marriage (though looking back neither was he).  I explained to him they were really old messages and that I was trying as best as I knew how.  I suggested we start over.  We began to text each other and pretended we didn’t know each other in attempts to get a connection again.

Two days later the last shred of who I was died.

It was Sunday, September 29, 2013.  We had skipped church that day because I was too “tired”.  I had been struggling with deep undiagnosed depression and couldn’t get up at this point.  It was early evening and I got back into bed with an ice pack for my face.  I had been suffering with a major acne breakout that left me with searing pain.  Mike* turned on Netflix and we began to watch an episode of the “X-files”.  I felt dread come over me while we watched.  I hated being in the same room as him due to my shame.

Before I could evaluate how ashamed I felt, he began to kiss me.  I pulled away because I really didn’t want to kiss.  He was not going to take “no” for an answer.  I kept struggling as his lips pushed against my face and neck.  His teeth biting slightly into my neck as I tried to pull him off as best as I could.  His hands groped my breasts and vagina and he rubbed against me.  I cried and begged him to stop.  We were living with my parents while saving to purchase a house, and they were in the other room.  I felt too ashamed to cry out.  I kept pushing him off me.  He would take a break from molesting me to tell me things.  He told me he saw my texts and knew how I liked it.  He told me he knew I was a naughty girl.  He pointed to our marriage tattoo (with the scripture Genesis 2:24 – “for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and join to his wife and the two shall become one flesh”). He told me that I couldn’t leave because of this…that we were joined to each other.  I begged him to just hold me, though I didn’t want to be held, I just didn’t want to be groped again.  He held me for a few seconds and continued to molest me.  I cried and cried.  I was not strong enough to push him away.  I was not strong enough to run to my parents and tell them.  In my head it was my fault.  I was his wife, and I had to submit.  But I couldn’t.   He forced me to touch his erect penis and said “this is what you do to me still”.  He would not stop.  He told me that he doesn’t care how long it will take…that he would do this every night until I gave in….he told me he enjoyed the struggle.  I think about 30 minutes into this assault I finally gave up.  I laid on my side as he molested me.  I stared at the remote control on my nightstand praying to the God I had known and loved to help me.  I tried to find a place in my head to hide because I felt for sure he was going to rape me.  It had been 10 years since I had sex, and this was how my first time in a decade would be.  But for some reason, he stopped.  He laid back down and the room fell silent.  During this assault we had gone through 2 episodes of “X-files”.  That’s the only way I knew how long this went on for.  I laid beside him scared to move, not sure what was going to happen now.  I was in flight mode.  In my head I was already gone.  He did not penetrate me even then.  Fear encompassed me from that moment forward.

From the Other Side of the Cage,

Jae

Wives, Submit to your Husbands (Part 1: My Transgression)

Mike* and I had been married for almost 6 years when I woke up from my slumber.  It took 6 years to realize something wasn’t right.  Our religion taught us that couples must wait until marriage to have sex lest we be in sin.  So we waited.  Sure, we had a couple heavy make out sessions that filled me with intense shame but never anything that led to orgasm or revealed naked body parts.  We were together two years before we tied the knot.

But the wedding night came and went and still we did not have intercourse.  Maybe we just got the jitters.  I was nervous for him to see me naked (despite in my past being an exhibitionist).  But as the honeymoon progressed actual intercourse still never happened.  We made a couple failed attempts, but my body proved to be too tense and tight.  I felt it was odd because I was not a virgin.  I hadn’t had intercourse in about 3 years at that point and figured I just tightened back up.  We did other things, but never the actual act of penetration.  Our “other stuff” was not at the rate that most newlyweds experience.  It started off maybe once a month.  Then it was every 2-3 months.  Then every 6.  Until finally it was 2 years since we had any romantic touch.  We still never had penetrative sex.

Though, in retrospect, I should have known something was wrong, it didn’t occur to me in those years.  I saw others around me having babies and being happy in love, and for some reason all I felt was anger and jealousy.  I never could place why, but now I see.  My marriage was not like theirs.  It was like roommates who happened to make out a few times.

There were other aspects of our time together that was off.  These things could fill books.  We had absolutely no communication.  In the 6 years married we actually never even talked about sex.  I think we had one or two conversations prior to marriage (like if we believed oral sex was sin), but outside of that, it was like the elephant in the room.  This was not the only thing we didn’t talk about.  I tried to talk about “adult” things (like buying a house, our future, dreams, goals, etc) but Mike* was more interested in playing video games, skateboarding, and other hobbies.  Most times when I talked about anything it was as if I was talking to the air.  I am pretty sure words came out of my mouth, but they were met with dead silence….for years…YEARS… I repeat for years my words fell into the emptiness of space.  In February of 2012 I decided to stop talking.  As I shut up I began to notice other things that were wrong.

I was like a mother.  I had to take care of him.  Though he had a job, I was responsible for making sure all the bills were paid.  I did the groceries.  I cooked.  I made all the decisions – both big and small.  It got to a point where I had to tell him the smallest of things (for example, after spilling cereal on the deck he asked if he should clean it up).  I tried not to nag.  I tried to do it all with a smile like a good Christian wife should.  But inwardly I cried day and night.  Though cries were in the depths of my heart, I got good at smiling.  When he would come home from work and never ask about my day, I would smile.  When I  lost about 30 lbs in hopes he would notice me and he never once told me that I was beautiful, I smiled.  When my “calling” was being fulfilled finally as I joined the worship band at church and he never came or even asked how I did, I smiled.  When I talked and my words were met with silence, I smiled.

A deep sense of loneliness crept into my heart.  I didn’t feel I could tell any of our Christian friends due to the shame.  Due to it all being my fault.  Due to my world collapsing.  I began to explore online interactions.  It started with an innocent game of Words With Friends.  One of my first nights I began chatting with my random opponent.  He asked if I was married.  I said “yes”.  He then asked if I was happy.  I couldn’t respond truthfully.  So I gave him a line like, “most of the time”.  Which was also not true but less of a lie than “yes”.  My faith told me that as followers in Jesus we did not need to be happy but rather to have “the joy of the Lord”.  Happiness was not what we should seek.  So unhappiness was accepted into my heart as my most loyal companion.

This same man flirted with me.  For the most part I resisted, but it felt so good that someone would take the time to notice me.  He never saw my picture, and I never saw his.  I imagined him to be very muscular and Italian like he described.  I became infatuated with him.  A few weeks later I finally gave into temptation and began flirting back.  Hormones began raging, and my human sexuality couldn’t restrain itself any longer.  I gave into the temptation of masturbation.  Afterward, I felt the weight of my sin.  What a worse wretch I was then.  Shame flooded my entire being.  I was a monster.  It had been years since I had an orgasm and something that felt so good made me feel so terrible.  But after that I couldn’t stop.  A few weeks later my WWF opponent stopped talking to me.  I needed more interaction.  I began to see more and more how alone I was, and this was the only thing that made me feel good.  I joined another app called “Distant Shore”.  It was anonymous for the most part.  You send out messages in a bottle to people all over the world, and they send their own.  You can respond to their messages, and they can respond back.  It was one of the first places I began to admit all that was happening in my marriage.  Most of my initial messages were cryptic cries for help.  I met a few guys who paid attention to me so we began to chat on texting apps.  I was too paranoid of crazy internet stalkers to give my full name or telephone number at first.  I was also always terrified to send pictures of myself to any of them.  My own husband wouldn’t touch me so in my head I felt I must be disgusting.  I must be so ugly.  In fact, in public if I saw a semi handsome guy, my eyes couldn’t even meet his because I couldn’t bear to see his face of disgust at my ugliness.  This was how I lived.  All the guys I chatted with told me that I was beautiful.  That I was hot.  That I was pretty.  That I was amazing.  Even after I sent them my pictures!  I wasn’t convinced they were telling the truth, but at a certain point it didn’t even matter.  They were talking to me.  They were listening to me.  They were giving me what every girl craves.  It was the first time I began to believe that perhaps I was pretty.  Or at least not the monster I saw in the mirror.

Of course sex was involved.  I was mostly celibate for such a long time and my body couldn’t handle it anymore.  I never met any of these guys but carried on various sexual online affairs.  I was ashamed of myself, but I could not stop.  I tried so many times to stop, but I just wasn’t strong enough.  I was constantly repenting.  I was still in the worship band and felt like a hypocrite most of the time.  I would repent on a Sunday and be back to the affairs by Tuesday.  I was two people, and neither were happy.  I began to even have deep feelings for a couple of the men.  One in particular, Daniel*, I believe I fell in love with.  We held both to a fantasy of our life together (despite being 700 miles apart).  I loved living in that fantasy.  In it we had a baby who we named Gabriel, a German Shepard we took hiking, a condo where I had a rooftop garden, and a life of love together.  It was the only place where I was happy.  I sheltered myself there and it became my closest hope to a happy life.  I knew the reality that me and Daniel* would never meet let alone be together, but I guarded that place deep in myself.   I would rather have lived in a fantasy world than my reality.

My reality was that divorce is a sin.  Good Christians don’t get divorced.  “What God has joined together, let not man separate” was what I heard from believers around me.  The only acceptable reason for divorce is sexual immorality – not abuse, not unhappiness, not what I was dealing with.  I couldn’t leave.  If I left, I would be all alone.  No church.  No friends.  The vast majority of my family (his family) would be gone.  I felt alone in my current state, but I would truly be alone if I left.  The church was my friends.  The church was my family.  And I knew if I left Mike* they would not be there.  The solution the church gives in this situation is to pray more and to read the Word more.  But I had been doing those things for years without being able to admit out loud how wrong things were.  Doing so left me pretending everything was ok.

So, for as long as I could,  I lived in the fantasy.

From the Other Side of the Cage,

Jae

In the Beginning (my intro)

Growing up my family was never religious.  As a child my father’s mother jumped from religion to religion (mostly in the mainstream Christian faith).  Outside of that he was even forced to attend a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall for a while.  This jumping around made him shy away from God and religion.  My mother grew up Catholic, attending Mass weekly, and fulfilling all the sacraments.  However, shortly after becoming an adult, she stopped going.  She always held the belief that religion is personal.

During my formative years, I recall being jealous of friends who went to church.   I longed for what they had, and as a highly imaginative youngster, hoped in things that could fill the oceans like God, Santa, and the Tooth Fairy. By age 13, despite being boy crazy, decided that I was to be a nun.  But by this point in life, depression seeped into the core of my being.  Though still highly imaginative, I was highly self-critical and self-loathing due to how others treated me because of my eccentricities.  Around age 18 I was a self-declared “atheist” mainly due to the agonizing pain depression left me with.

I remember the night I gave my life to The Lord.  I was weeks away from committing suicide (I was planning how it would be done) when my longtime friend, Angelica*, invited me to see the Passion of the Christ with her.  In those 126 agonizing minutes that I witnessed the blood stained Jesus, my journey into Christianity began.  That night, lying in my bed, I cried to the heavens, “If You are real, please show me.  And if You are real, I am sorry.”

What my young 21-year-old conscience apologized for was my shames, my guilts, my promiscuity, the wretch I saw myself as, and the wretch the world told me I was.  Part of my guilt had no founding on reality but a perception that I saw myself as a monster….a dreadful human for whom there was no hope.  But shortly after that midnight prayer, I felt the God I had heard stories about come into my life.  He removed the majority of my sorrows, my pains, and my self-loathing thoughts. This God who came to me then, I vowed to follow to the end of the world because I had already declared myself dead.  My life now was no longer my own, and that mantra happened to be the central theme to the Christian faith.

Shortly after my conversion I met Mike*, the man I would later marry.  This was the first serious relationship in my life.  At the ripe old age of 21, I decided this was the man I was to marry.  God had obviously put him on my path, he appeared to love the Lord as much as I did, and so 2 years later we said “I do” in front of our closest relatives and friends.

During our 2 year courtship/engagement, we attended church regularly.  Not just any old church, but we chose to be a part of the Pentecostal/Charismatic denomination.  We were even on the leadership team.  This denomination was where we felt God was present and most active.  We even planned that right after our wedding ceremony we would ride off into the sunset, leave our father and mother, and attend Bible College some 550 miles away.

Oh the ideals of youth!

No one could change our young stubborn minds.  Mike* was quite familiar with this Bible College.  Some of his friends previously attended it, and he himself was saved because of their attendance to that school.  Oddly, this Bible College was in a small town I lived in as a young child.  I believed this to be a sign from God that we should attend it.  Just a couple short weeks after we returned from our honeymoon, we made the trek hundreds of miles from all we knew to a place where we would be forever changed.

This blog will fill pages of my experiences of the abuse many churches allow – both Spiritual and Relationship.  At times these abuses coincide in the same toxic space.  I spent years in personal study and reflection of the Word of God (although now it has little use besides revealing what I believe to be hypocrisy), and I will share this with whoever finds this blog.  As a fast forward in time, I am currently divorced, in therapy, and recovering from Major Depression and PTSD.  A lot of this mental breakdown is caused from abuses which I experienced after that day we rode off into the sunset.  I want to use this space as a place to reach out to those who have similar experiences as me.

But as I currently am entering into a new season of my life outside of the walls of religion, I also write this blog of my experiences from the last decade to reach out to the caged birds.  Those who feel trapped, those who feel alone, those who just hope and pray the doors to their shackled life will finally open, and even those who have already made their escape.  I assure you, there is hope.  I assure you, you are not alone.  And I assure you, one day you will sing a song of freedom as your wings grace the open sky.

From the Other Side of the Cage,

Jae