Shame, Shame, Shame
I woke up this morning — Christmas morning-with clarity about why I left my marriage. Before it leaves me, I wanted to get it down in writing. I’ll start by telling you about the day I moved out of my house — the first house I’d ever bought — and in with B. We were packing up my kitchen and I asked him, “Should I take this toaster oven?”
“No,” he said. “We’ll get a better one.”
The toaster oven was added to a near room full of things that were not making the transition from my little brick house in the inner city neighborhood that I’d grown up in to the tall ceilings and professionally landscaped lawns of the suburbs and the basis for our relationship was firmly established. B wanted to give me better than what I had. I wanted it, desperately.
Within a year, we’d relocated to Michigan. I kept a blog during that time that I called “My Fairy Tale Life.” I literally felt like a Prince had swooped in and saved me from the dragon of my past and all the shame that came with it. My sister, whom I loved so dearly, was actively addicted to crack. I’d been through a very painful custody battle for my niece with my mother and aunt. My youngest daughter’s father’s transition to being a quadriplegic had left him even more hateful than he’d been before his accident, which meant more battles in Juvenile Court to try to keep my daughter safe. I had managed to work my way to the end of a Bachelor’s degree and hold down a full-time job, and I was tired. I wanted to forget about addiction, and dysfunction and the deep, deep shame that I felt. That white knight that I learned about in story books looked like a gift from the gods. And, I loved him. He was funny, smart, handsome. I woke up in the mornings and couldn’t believe he was my person. How did I get so lucky?
So, here’s the problem as I see it with getting a fairy tale. It wasn’t my life. I had willingly put my life in the pile with the toaster oven, in hopes of finding better. In one giant, 700 mile leap, I had landed in a white, middle-class, Mid-Western life that I wasn’t sure how to navigate. A life that required a lot of energy for me to feel comfortable in. Now, with a Master’s degree, people saw me as I was at that moment — as they were and had mostly been their whole lives — white mom and a white dad, both college educated, 2 full-time jobs with 401(k) savings and a financed, American-made vehicle, and managing that perception was work and it was lonely.
After my son died, I started to realize how bereft of meaning my life was. I was living B’s life, not my own. I had walked away from all the relationships that had sustained me. I’d voluntarily given up things that were gifted to me by people who had nothing to give except their art. There were no more people of color in my life, no more immigrants, no more ‘vacas’ where everyone put in $50 a week, so that they could have the good fortune of $500 when their time came around. Instead, I was tailgating. My kids were going to summer camp away and having unmindful, materialistic Christmases. I had taken for granted all of the heart and soul of my previous life and traded it in for the fairy tale.
In March, 2017, when B. said to me, “I don’t think I want to farm this year. I want to spend more time with J. (his secondary partner) and you,” it was a punch in the chest. Everything was a lie. My husband held a massive amount of privilege and always had. So much so, that even after everything we’d done to get him through the farming program, and buy a property where he could farm, he could lay it down at any time and move on to the next thing as easily as a casual comment over breakfast.
I no longer want to trade my life for something better. I don’t want to trade my family for someone else’s less complicated family. I’m no longer ashamed of my past, and now, I’m not ashamed of my present anymore. I’m authentically who I am, and as it turns out, I like that person quite a bit.
