Love Warrior: A Memoir by Glennon Doyle Melton

Author:Glennon Doyle Melton [Melton, Glennon Doyle]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781250075741
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Published: 2016-09-06T07:00:00+00:00

9

I DO NOT REMEMBER picking my sister up at the airport the next day. I do not remember my parents’ arrival two days later. I do not remember telling the kids that their mom and dad love them very much, but need time apart. I do not remember telling Craig to rent his own apartment, or agreeing to let him take one of our dogs. I do not remember setting up a schedule for him to see the kids. Grief is an eraser. I feel erased of everything but pain and fear.

My anger is the ocean. There are moments of calm and stillness and then, without warning, the disturbance begins beneath my skin, churning, gathering power until there is nothing I can do but surrender and ride it out. I stand in my driveway and scream into the phone at Craig, wishing him dead. “Dead would be easier than this!” I shout. “Dead would mean I wouldn’t have to deal with you again. I could tell the kids you were a good man and grieve you and start over with someone else. If you were dead, I wouldn’t have to share these kids with you. The kids that I protected and you threw away. It’s selfish for you to even exist anymore!” When the wave of fury subsides I am wiped out, exhausted, spent.

My imagination is a jack-in-the-box. I’m constantly ambushed by images of Craig with other women and these visions leave me breathless. I picture myself calling Craig on a business trip, his cell phone ringing unanswered on his hotel night stand while a naked woman lies beside him. I imagine my children talking to their friends at school, “So our stepmom’s taking us to Disneyland.…” Often when these ghosts pop up, I’m literally knocked off balance, so I have to grab for the nearest wall to steady myself. I cannot even trust my own mind to be kind to me.

My depression is a dark, dense fog. When it clears I emerge to engage with the kids, but then it rolls in again without warning and I find myself unable to speak or move. I pass everything off to my parents and get into bed and sleep. This is my parents’ gift to me, the gift of sleep. Sleep is my only escape, and the price of escape is waking up with the fresh awareness that I wasn’t dreaming. This is my life.

My grief is a solid brick wall in front of me. I want to bulldoze through it, scale it, tear it down a brick at a time. I’m desperate to get to the other side of the wall so I can see what’s waiting for me down the path. But the wall will not budge, or let me climb, or let me remove a single brick. All it will allow me to do is lean against it, exhausted. Grief is nothing but a painful waiting, a horrible patience. Grief cannot be torn down or scaled or overcome or outsmarted.

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