No Light

First let me give a quick disclaimer before you read this post.

I AM OKAY.  CRAIG IS OKAY. 

WE ARE OKAY.

I've been sitting here working through my Bible Study homework for the week while listening to Florence and the Machine through my iTunes and there is one particular song with some very specific lyrics that have stopped me from being able to move on with my homework.

I had to write this image out of my head so that I can proceed.  This post isn't about what happened yesterday or last week - it's just a collection of conversations that Craig and I have had over the past year since Natalie was born, particularly when I was in a tough spot with the PPD last summer.

Okay.  Here we go.

"No Light, No Light"

Florence + the Machine

Off the Ceremonials album

Selected lyrics:

I was disappearing in plain sight
Heaven help me
I need to make it right
You want a revelation
You want to get right
But it's a conversation
I just can't have tonight

You want a revelation
Some kind of resolution
You are the revelation

No light, no light in your bright blue eyes
I never knew daylight could be so violent
A revelation in the light of day

You can't choose what stays and what fades away
And I'd do anything to make you stay

No light, no light
No light

Tell me what you want me to say
But would you leave me,
If I told you what I've done

And would you leave me
If I told you what I've become
'Cause it's so easy,
To sing it to a crowd
But it's so hard, my love
To say it to you, all alone

I just remember so many nights Craig and I had this very conversation.  He desperately wanted to know what was going through my brain and how he could help get it out and make it better.  But I was locked up.  I couldn't physically verbalize what was going on because I couldn't make sense of it in my own head.  And then there were the intrusive thoughts and visions that flitted their way into my consciousness.  No.  He could never know those things.  I was always so scared to say anything because I knew I would cry.  And if I started crying, there was a good chance that I would never, ever stop.  So I shut down and I got angry because for whatever reason, that was the only emotion that I could process.  The only one that felt safe.  If I lashed out my anger at everyone else then they wouldn't want to be near me and then they wouldn't figure out that I was a complete waste.  I didn't want to be near me.  I felt toxic - like I was polluting everything good and pure in my life, most of all my child and my husband.

It was an ugly place to live.

No.  Live isn't the right word.

It was an ugly place to exist.

We didn't LIVE during this time.  We were existing.  We were waking up in the morning, functioning through the day and going to bed at night.

That part in the song about leaving me if I told him what I'd done and what I'd become.  That was my biggest fear.  I knew I wasn't right, I knew that I wasn't giving him the life that he had signed up for.  I felt defective.  I felt that he deserved a proper wife and mother of his child.  I wanted him to be happy and I wasn't able to provide him any sort of happiness for a very long time.

There was a moment when we were giving Natalie a bath one night.  He was getting her out of the tub to dry her off and I ran into her bedroom for a nighttime diaper and her pajamas.  As I was walking through our bedroom to go back into the bedroom  I paused by the dresser, just out of sight of Craig and Natalie sitting on the floor by the tub.  I listened.  They were jabbering together.  They were happy.  And I wasn't there.  My breath caught in my throat and my heart raced.

They could live without me.  This is what it would be like if I wasn't here.  Happy.  Peaceful.  It would be better this way.

My thoughts went down the rabbit hole.  The two of them selling the house, living in a little condo with the pups.  Craig trying to figure out how to put her hair into a ponytail for her first basketball game.  Helping her pick out her prom dress, one that would make her look gorgeous.  Walking her down the aisle, whispering in her ear that he loved her.

And in none of these scenes was I present.  I wasn't dead, I just wasn't present.  Runaway maybe?

I was stuck in a place where I couldn't imagine climbing out of my dark hole and enjoying life with my family.  But despite the tears in my eyes and the rapid beating of my heart, I swallowed my anxiety and walked into the bathroom to rejoin my family.  I couldn't let him know what I had scene, what I had pictured.

But the whole year, I sorely underestimated him.  I also exhausted him, frustrated him, at times berated him, forced all my anger on him and pushed him away.

Oh my.  That was a tough thing to write.

But he stayed.  He put in the work to keep the home running and Natalie out of the way of my angry tornado.  He listened when I cried and forced me to get out of the house with my friends and have some fun.  He was patient, he was forgiving.......and forgiving........and forgiving.

He forgave me as the Lord forgives.  Instantaneously, without an apology and without expectation of receiving anything as compensation.  He saw through the anger I was spewing and looked at my heart and how broken I was.  He knows what to look for.  He's been broken too.

I am so thankful the Lord gave us one another to help with putting the pieces of each other back together.