LOVE HURTS

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Escape. The first two years of my son’s life I escaped rather than embraced the life I chose. At school I wasn’t a mother or a wife. I was an aspiring writer who had intellectual conversations with men who were astronauts for NASA and retired CEOs of Chevron and women who had lived through decades of turmoil to come out on top as victors.

I escaped into writing another fiction novel, Corner of My Mind, a story loosely based on my own story of rape and betrayal. I joined a writer’s guild and attended every writer’s conference in the area. Between the classes for the master’s program, raising Ryan, and working part-time I was spent. My patience wore thin for everyone within arm’s reach.

In a desperate move to lessen my load I quit working for the oil company which drastically reduced our income. I held out hope the move would relieve the stress that caused the irritability and outbursts. Instead the stress level rose and added more tension to our marriage.

Dreams of becoming an author with the breakaway novel of the year kept me inspired and determined. I imagined my books were going to be a catalyst of change with young adults. I wrote daily while Ryan napped. I sent query letters to dozens of agents for an interest in representation only to receive rejection after rejection. Persistence and an internal hunch kept me going. I knew I had a message to share but I couldn’t figure out a way to release it.

The only person I knew who would understand this inner call was Monica. She had since moved on into another position with the oil company but we remained friends. Monica in my eyes had a direct connection to God and I needed to know what to do about this longing.

“Just have faith, Shannon,” she said. “If God is calling you to it, He will walk you through it.”

“What?” I expected her to tell me word for word what to do or say. “What do you mean ‘have faith’?”

“Oh, Shannon, you know.” The corners of her eyes pinched when she giggled. “Faith. If you believe this is something you are supposed to be doing then trust it will happen.”

I moaned. She used the ‘T’ word. Trust. How do I trust what I’m feeling? How do I trust God? That was the real question.

The nagging feeling coursed through my body and got stronger with each rejection letter. I didn’t give up. I kept writing and eventually finished the book sending out another dozen query letters for agents. Each letter was more creative and I received some requests for the first few chapters and then the entire manuscript. A sense of hope mingled with the longing to achieve this need, this purpose I couldn’t quite describe.

I worked on this writing project with a feverish passion. I put more into writing than I did my son or marriage because I was able to control what I wrote and how much effort I put into it. My relationship with Neal faded into the background. We didn’t talk; we argued. Both of us wanted approval and appreciation from the other and neither of us was willing to give it unless we received. So he spent more of his time with friends. I felt both at peace and guilty when he chose to spend time elsewhere.

Ryan suffered the most. I didn’t understand him. There were moments I adored my son and yet others that left me perplexed and frustrated. I’d play hide and seek and he’d chuckle from deep within his belly when he found me. I loved his laugh. It burst forth like fireworks and lit up the room. But when he was tired, upset, or angry he’d sit on the couch and bang the back of his head against the back of the couch and hum in a monotone syllable. I’d never seen a toddler with this behavior.

The differences between Ryan and other kids were more obvious when he played with my friend Liz’s daughter, Chelsea. She was a few months younger, pounds lighter, and inches smaller than Ryan. They both loved the water. I’d often set up a blow up toddler pool in our backyard for them to play and escape the scorching Texas heat.

One such day, Chelsea splashed happily around in the shallow water, crawled on her belly like an alligator. She filled up the plastic water guns to try shoot her mom and me but missed and got Ryan. He lunged for Chelsea and tried to hit her with his plastic gun.

“Ryan. Stop.” I was on my feet and unclenching his plump fingers from the plastic toy. Chelsea sat in the water and cried. I saw the disapproval on Liz’s face when she picked Chelsea up out of the water. “I’m so sorry.” My heart sank. This wasn’t the first time. He often hit, punched, and bit when a child accidently bumped him or offended him in some way.

Chelsea and Ryan played together often and as usual Liz did her best to downplay the situations. “Ryan’s a boy. He’s going to play rough.”

I’d feel better … until it happened again and again and the disapproving looks replaced the reassurances. Ryan got older and more aggressive. He was still a baby but there were days it felt as if his tantrums were calculated.

“Ryan, you can’t go in the garage. It’s dangerous.” It was time for a nap and I needed to get a paper written for class.

“No.” He’d picked up that word earlier than most toddlers his age. Not unusual when it’s a word you hear often.

I had a hold of him by the arm in one hand and a stack of papers in my other. He pulled away from me but I held firm. “Ryan it’s naptime. You are not allowed to go in the garage.”

“No.”

He twisted and pulled away, sending me off balance and causing the papers to scatter across the floor. “Ryan.” I bent down to get the papers in order.

Before I could get the papers in a pile he had the door to the garage open and one foot in. I knew I needed safety knobs but figured I had time since he just started walking a few months before. His defiance triggered something inside of me. I didn’t see an eighteen-month-old exploring unaware of the dangers before him. I saw a little boy with the mind of a man who did what he wanted to do. “Ryan I said no.” I picked him up and kicked the garage door behind me.

“No, no, no.” Ryan kicked and wiggled in my arms, screaming until his face turned purple. His chubby fists beat on my face.

I took him to his room and put him in his crib. One, two, three, four…I counted to calm myself down. “It’s naptime.”

Ryan stood up and screamed with his mouth wide open and his fists clenched at his side. No tears. Just the glass shattering screams.

I shut the door behind me. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten…I counted to twenty and waited for the screams to stop but his lungs were strong.

He’s testing me. I walked away from the door and went into the kitchen to pick the pile of papers off the floor.

Thump. Thump. Thump. I heard the loud noise coming from Ryan’s room.

Defeated I put the papers on the table and went back to his room. The screams stopped but the banging was intense. I cracked open the door to peer inside. Ryan faced the wall. He was on his hands and knees and I could hear him humming.

Thump.

It startled me. My hands flew to my mouth in surprise. He hit his head against the wall. It was absurd to consider Ryan knew what he was doing or assume he did it on purpose. I was irrational but not cruel.

Ryan heard the creak of the door and stopped. He sat back on his heels and raised his arms for me to pick him up.

“Oh, Ryan.” I picked him up, inspected, and kissed his forehead where he hit the wall, and settled into the glider to rock him to sleep.

My world spun out of control. Insecurities, fears, triggers, and pride complicated my relationship with Neal, Ryan, and everyone around me. My life was not what I envisioned it should be. I was lost and void of feeling except for the burning desire to write and have a voice masked by the lives of fictional characters. I finished the first year of graduate school twenty-six years old and miserable.

Early in our marriage, Neal and I promised to start a tradition for our anniversary. I suggested that each year we take turns surprising one another with a weekend getaway to keep the love alive. Neal and I both ignored my depression and for our third anniversary I went through the motions and made reservations at a bed and breakfast in Nacogdoches, TX, where we had gone to school.

I set myself up for failure. This getaway turned into a reminder of what I wished I could be and longed to feel. I couldn’t blame Neal because I was the one who made the reservation for the bed and breakfast. I walked into the cozy little cottage with its white walls, floor to ceiling windows with a view of lush green forest, and took in the smell of the fresh lavender that filled the vases throughout the room. Immediately my insides turned to stone from the unmentioned expectation.

“Check this out.” Neal climbed into the pristine white claw-footed bathtub. “Can’t wait to try this out.” He looked at me and winked. “It definitely is big enough for the both of us.”

My heart raced with performance anxiety. The surroundings were too quaint. Too picture perfect. Neal deserved to have a wife that crawled right into the tub without misgivings. I wanted to say, “It is big enough for both of us. Why wait let’s get started?” But the image put a lump in my throat. Why can’t I be that way with my husband? It shouldn’t be hard. We’re married.

The calming sound of a saxophone serenade greeted us when we came back from dinner. The owner had come in to do a turn down service, complete with Kenny G in the CD player, a bottle of chilled wine and chocolates on the pillows.

Neal shut the door behind us and pulled me into his arms. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

I love him. I swallowed and tried to shed the unexplained nervousness. On this atypical night as I lay in my husband’s arms after we made love I knew that something special transpired despite my anxieties. I can’t explain it other than a blanket of peace settled over me and I felt for the first time as if I could find my way to normal. For a brief moment the void and misery were gone and instead was a taste of happiness.

When we returned from the weekend life was a bit easier. Laughter filled the house once again and I was at peace. My cycle, long and heavy, never stopped but I knew. Three months passed since our anniversary and my cycle was light. I stood in the bathroom and stared at the sixth pregnancy test I’d taken in three months. This is crazy I know I’m pregnant. My heart fluttered with anticipation, finally the pink lines told the truth.

Once again, when I called to schedule my appointment with the ob-gyn, the receptionist set it for a future date closer to what she presumed to be eight weeks gestation. Neal and I walked into the doctor’s office clenching each other’s hands.

Neither of us said what our minds were screaming. Please let this baby be alive. I’d been in and out of the same doctor’s office for months when pregnant with Ryan but this moment brought back the ugly memory in high definition.

Once again on the table with jelly spread across my stomach Neal and I stared at the screen with determination. The machine came alive. I blinked unable to believe what I knew was on the screen.

“Well what do you know.” Dr. Baker moved the wand around on my stomach and tapped a few keys on the machine. “You’ve got a baby moving around in there.”

“I only see one embryo, right?” Neal leaned over my chest and squinted at the screen.

“Yes.” She did a few more clicks and the screen froze and then came back to life. “Actually you can see a healthy heartbeat right here. And…” She used a pen to point at the fluttering bean on the screen, “I need to do a few more measurements but I think we have our dates wrong. You’re further along than you anticipated.”

I stared at the heart beating on the screen and cried. My baby is alive.

“This little guy measures to be eleven weeks so that puts you almost out of your first trimester. It looks like your due date will be the beginning of April. We will have a better date for you at your sixteen week ultrasound.”

Neal and I practically skipped out of the doctor’s office. I knew I had been right all along. “You know what this means, right?”

“What?”

“We got pregnant on our anniversary.”

He pulled me into him and kissed me. “We should do that more often.”

I giggled and pushed him away. “It’s all about Kenny G.”

One month was all I had between the baby’s due date and turning in a thesis for graduation. Deadlines for the thesis along with pacifying an aggressive two year old threatened to push me over the edge of sanity.

My belly ballooned while Ryan’s defiant nature exploded. “Ryan, sit down so I can get your shoes on please.” I was on my knees on the kitchen floor wrestling with him to sit down.

“No. Percy. I get Percy.” He struggled to let loose so he could go to his bedroom for one of his toy trains.

My fingers got a good grip on his wrist and I pulled him down. “I am late and we need to get your shoes on.” I reached for one foot and he kicked me in the stomach with the other.

I gulped in air. It wasn’t the first time he’d landed a kick or two into my pregnant belly. I did everything I could to avoid the attacks but my belly was too big to protect when I needed to calm his flailing hands and feet.

The attacks felt blatant and full of spite, which triggered a defensive response. I didn’t see him as my precious, innocent little boy. The adrenaline from the perceived attack filled me with a jolt of energy, and I grabbed both feet with one hand. “Neal Ryan Deitz.” He fell back and kept wriggling to get free. I turned him over and swat him hard on the bottom three times. “You do not kick your mommy.”

I knew this was not right. As his mother I needed to be his advocate, the one who raised him up to learn to communicate and react better. He reacted to me, and I was irrational.

He wasn’t fazed. “No!”

He kicked his legs and my grip on his feet got stronger.

“I want Percy.”

Sweat trickled down the nape of my neck. “You can get Percy after I put your shoes on.” I let go of one foot and struggled to get the shoe over his toes when he kicked my belly with all his strength. “Argh!” A pain shot through my abdomen and I let go of his feet.

He shot up and ran to his room. A moment later he returned with Percy in his hands and a smile on his face.

I placed a protective hand over my belly and finally the baby kicked in response. Defeated, I watched Ryan sit obediently on the floor to put his shoes on, talking to his toy train Percy, oblivious to my despair.

Ryan and I were on an emotional see-saw. He wasn’t always defiant. There were high moments with the deep belly laughs that brought joy to my ears and filled my heart with tenderness and compassion. Deep down I knew there was something going on with him and me but I was a new mother and couldn’t articulate it. Compared to the other children his age he seemed to be the only one with aggressive tendencies. And I was scared to admit my own behavior.

I felt alone in handling Ryan. Neal would bring a baseball or football home and try to engage Ryan in play but Ryan would choose to ignore the balls and get on his hands and knees to rock and hum. It was odd behavior and instead of commiserating with me on what it could be and how we could help him Neal checked out and went to a friend’s.

One rare moment my mother-in-law witnessed Ryan kicking, screaming, and wailing his arms around. I handled the situation poorly. I picked him up and shoved his thrashing body into his room. I held the door shut so he couldn’t escape. When he finally stopped beating his head against the door and fell asleep on the floor I wiped the tears from my own eyes. I looked at my mother-in-law in defeat. “How is it I can love this child and not like him at the same time?” A part of me wanted her to admit what I knew was the truth – I needed help.

“It’s just the terrible two’s. He’s a strong-willed child. It’ll pass.” She looked at me with pity and walked away.

When I tried to talk to Neal about my frustrations and perceptions he placed blame on me and my poor parenting skills, the fact that I yelled and was impatient. I couldn’t argue with truth.

###

The second pregnancy was rough. I struggled in all relationships. It was battle of wills with Ryan and a battle of pride with Neal. On game nights with friends the topic often turned to jokes about sex which ultimately led to comments from Neal about the lack of sex he received. “We don’t know what sex is in our house anymore.” The men would laugh and then complain about how marriage and kids changed the frequency of their sex lives.

Each snide remark I heard from Neal laid a new layer of resentment on the wall I’d built to keep from getting too close. In a thin leather bound book I unlocked the anxieties and frustrations that threatened to pull me further into the depths of depression.

“I don’t love myself,” I wrote with brutal honesty. “I hope my future finds me to be a woman who is confident with herself, her abilities, who can look in the mirror and love herself. How can I expect Neal to love me if I don’t?”

I slipped and slid into a pit of depression. I needed counseling but I didn’t want to go alone. After the rape in college I worked with a therapist for two years. It helped to talk to her about the shame and fear that had me bound up inside. But this time it was my problem to share. Neal needed to go to counseling with me.

“I’m not going to counseling.” Neal stomped away from the kitchen like a child.

“Why? Even Fr. Richard said we’d need to go to counseling at some point in our marriage.” I followed him into the bedroom.

“Yeah, you. You’re the one with hostility. Not me.”

“But I’m not going just for me. We need to go for us.” I sat on the bed and placed a hand on my belly. I needed to persist. “We aren’t communicating well. All we do is fight.”

“You fight. I try to walk away, but you follow me.” He was in the closet, but I could still hear him mumble.

“What did you say?”

He poked his head out of the closet. “Nothing.”

“No, not ‘nothing’, what did you say?”

He walked out of the closet and toward the bathroom. “I said I’d rather have sex than fight but that’s not happening.”

“Why does it always have to be about sex?”

He stood in the doorway of the bathroom and looked at me as if I had two heads. “Really? Because you act like it’s wrong for me to want sex from my wife.”

“It’s not wrong, I just wish you wouldn’t poke me and grab me out of the blue. I don’t like it.”

“I’m your husband I should be able to grab your breast when I want to.” He shut the door. Subject closed.

My head spun with disbelief. He doesn’t have a right to grab my breast if I don’t want him to. But the problem was mine. He made that clear.

###

A glimmer of hope came in the mail when I received a ‘good’ rejection for Corner of My Mind from an agent. “Make your main character believable and I might give it another look.”

Believable? The main character is me. This is my story. How could I possibly make it more believable? Without delay I printed the first chapter for my critique group to review. They had no clue how deep insecurity ran in my bones. Kicked from all sides my critique group stomped the main character. I left the critique session with my head hung like a freshly scolded child. I give up.

Nevertheless, my desire to write blazed. Once I allowed the wounds of rejection to scab over I took another look at the blood soaked chapter with all of its red-inked dashes, slashes, and scrawled comments and sat down to rewrite.

I felt like a hollow chocolate bunny I’d find in the Easter basket as a kid. The only thing that held me together was the shell of a person I’d become with a small flame burning within the emptiness.

“I want to create a work that will touch people,” I wrote in the journal that was a home to these thoughts, feelings and emotions that rattled around in my emptiness. “I have an urge, a need to get myself out there in the public eye. But it’s not about me. I know from the tip of my heart to the soles of my feet and in the marrow of my bone that I am destined to show people something wonderful, something full of life. What is it? Is it my writing? Will I be speaking? What would I speak about?

It’s SOMETHING and it’s driving me insane that I’m not there yet. This urgency won’t even allow me to write legibly. I get so excited allowing my thoughts to be carried by this urge my brain can’t keep up with the physical aspect of writing all of my ideas and comments on paper. Do I sound crazy? Someone will end up reading this journal and have to squint to make out what I am trying to write and recognize that I’m crazy. But it’s all I have! This feeling. This urge. I wait for the day. I know it’s coming.”

If it weren’t for the inner call to do something I would’ve believed I lost my mind. I was lost as a mother and as a wife. My hormones raged with the second pregnancy and Neal and I were both sleep deprived, tense, and on edge. Neal worked twelve-hour days. He’d get up early and go into work by 5am and home by 5pm. Rarely did we have a date night. When we did happen to go out, choosing to see a psychological thriller movie was probably not the best choice for us to make.

After a pleasant dinner, we chose to see the movie What Lies Beneath. Neal preferred to see a comedy or a chic flick, but relented because I wanted to see a thriller.

Every five minutes I jumped out of my seat and squealed. Neal’s grip tightened on the armrests. I could see the white of his knuckles in the dark. Toward the end of the movie I let out another heart stopping scream. Neal leaned over and hissed, “Shut up!”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from cursing. We often exchanged harsh words with one another but he had never told me to ‘shut up’ before. It hurt my feelings and made me angry. When the lights came on in the theater I looked over at Neal and could see the lines in his forehead pinched together and his shoulders drawn up to his ears with tension.

Once away from the crowd Neal started in with a tirade of ‘F’ bombs. “The ‘F’ing kids in that ‘F’ing theater and everyone ‘F’ing screaming.” He let it fly like a child who just learned a new word.

“I liked it.”

“You should’ve known it was going to be scary. You know I don’t like those kind of movies. They make me tense.”

Too upset to speak I let the conversation drop as we headed home but Neal wouldn’t let it go. “Don’t go telling your friends what a horrible guy I am and how I hated the movie.”

The few friends I have know you better than I do. I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need to and I don’t appreciate you thinking I would go bad mouth you to our friends. I wouldn’t put you down.”

In a flash he put his hand up to my face as if to shut me up. Instinctively I reached over and slapped him. He pulled my hair and I reached over and pulled his. We had reverted to two petulant kids resolving the emotions we felt inside by pulling hair.

“That’s it.” Neal put both hands on the steering wheel. “We’re getting a divorce. I need to keep Ryan from being as abusive as you are.”

I tensed and my heart felt like it fell to the bottom of my feet. “But you put your hand in my face first.” The tension in my neck shot pains down my back. “Of course I’m going to fight back. I’m not going to sit back and be victimized.”

“Oh come on, I didn’t even touch you.” He looked in the rearview mirror to see a scratch mark I left behind on his neck when I pulled his hair.

The short ride home felt like an eternity. Caught in the desire to release the deep-seeded aggression and anger I focused on what Neal had done and said. In a feeble attempt to communicate and resolve this awful situation I wrote the following letter to Neal (it was my only way to communicate without him interrupting and my inclination to yell):

“Please hear me out. I need to ask you a question and I need you to be honest when you answer. Had what happened last night, me fighting back, had it been me and a stranger and they put their hand in my face would you not have told me to fight back? Granted, I’ll admit I actually scratched you and I do apologize but I won’t apologize for fighting back. In fact, it has helped me to resolve a fear of mine. For the first time I didn’t sit and take it while I was being pushed around. My instinct was to fight back. Now I know if anyone tries to physically harm me (I’m not saying you were) but if a stranger does I know I’ll have it in me to fight back at least to the death. So I feel the only thing I need to apologize for is pushing you verbally when I should have let it go. But if you think I’m a big threat to Ryan and our unborn child then by all means do something about it. If you don’t love me and want to get a divorce I won’t fight it. I can’t make you stay. But I will fight to keep my children.”

Neal’s words were harsh and unwarranted. Neither of us fought our fights well. I was still a young woman trying to find her worth, pushing to prove no one loved her but at the same time desperate for someone to say “I love you still.”

Neal held onto me that night after reading the letter. “I don’t know what got into me. That movie set me on edge but it’s no excuse for putting my hand in your face or saying what I said. I’m sorry. I love you and I don’t want to get a divorce. You’re a good mom.”

Neal loved me even still.

The next morning I had cramps and spotted.