The Rundown, Part 8

We've always been good at collaborating on projects together. If its something that we're united in, our talents combine and complement, our enthusiasm builds, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Of all the things that make us compatible, I've always loved that we can be 'a very effective team' the most.

We have a tradition of filming videos of our family and sending them out in place of Christmas cards. It became something we looked forward to and planned for months in advance. The year we were separated was no different. We spent a whole weekend building sets and hanging lights, filming with the kids in shifts and living off of holiday food. For the first time in forever, J spent the night at the house {albeit on the couch} and I could see how exciting it was for the kids to run downstairs in the morning and find him there. It felt good to be reminded of all the ways in which we could be amazing together.

And there were hopeful signs as well-- several moments when I would break down or express a fear or draw a boundary and J would react with tenderness and compassion. It made the entire experience beautiful and connecting.

Therapy was going very well. J was starting to express unprompted empathy, and he was nearing 90 days of genuine sobriety. It seemed that things had started to turn a corner.

Then we had a new Bishop called in. To our dismay, he was completely green when it came to addiction recovery. We could both tell that our separation freaked him out. He began cornering J at every opportunity and asking him what he could do to move the process along more quickly. We've gotta get you moved back in together, he'd say seriously. This separation thing just isn't good.

J's response? "I think my wife can take all the time she needs. We're working it out, and doing just fine."

My jaw dropped. I don't think J had ever defended me publicly about something that he in fact, wasn't entirely comfortable with either. It was such a telling show of solidarity and understanding that I began to think maybe, just maybe, this time things were actually different. Maybe he was in recovery.

But we had one large hurdle to jump before I could consider reconciliation. I needed to know everything. J had been lying for so long and so convincingly, that I needed to have it all out on the table. If we were going to start again, I wanted a blank slate. No secrets between us.

J worked for months on his Step 4 {write an honest and searching moral inventory} and prepared to share it with me. Our therapist tried to reassure me that while it would be painful to hear, there was probably nothing on it that I hadn't already thought of or known on some level. So with trepidation, we set a date to go over it together.

There is no other way to say it: that night was the worst night of my life.

It was as if every fearful, traumatizing thought I'd ever entertained had turned out to be true-- only worse. I sat, stunned and numb at first. The weight of what he said seemed to slowly crush down on me, until after he'd only made it halfway through, I broke down in raw, animalistic sobs.

Tentatively, he reached out to touch and comfort me, but I shoved his hand away, horrified and disgusted.

It was a pain unlike any I have ever experienced; a wave of betrayal and grief that flowed through me as every covenant we'd made, every sacred moment we'd shared, every beautiful thing we'd created together crashed down and was mocked before my eyes.

I felt so violated and tainted. I thought of every time I'd let him look at me, touch me, or be intimate with me, and suddenly felt dirty. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to die.

How could I ever come back from this? How would I ever look at him again? How would I ever look at myself?

I was still crying when J left.

I continued to cry for the next 24 hours. My poor kids-- they came in periodically as I sat in bed, surrounded by tissues, and would hug me as they asked about what to eat for lunch, seemingly unfazed by the fact that I was barely clinging to the land of the living. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. My eyes became red and swollen, and my whole body ached with the emotions that seemed to wrack my soul. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to feel indigent and powerful, to lash out at J and proclaim that we were through. But the truth was that I was simply and thoroughly devastated.

So I cried and prayed and journaled and cried again as I prepared to confront him.