For half a century I didn’t cry. Sure there were the obligatory tears shed over movies like “Beaches” and “Life is Beautiful”. Maybe a few drops landed on the pages of Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” and Hugo’s “Les Miserables”. Probably there was a small river that flowed by the bedsides of those I released to death’s grip.
Okay, okay, so I cried. But what I didn’t do was grieve. Not until the levee broke one unsuspecting day in November after a phone call ushered in flood waters to wash away the sticks and stones that broke my bones and all the words that hurt me.
“You’re not feeling anything,” the therapists cooed. “Your addiction has anesthetized you.”
I’m not a risk taker, and I’m an even worse swimmer, but still I took the plunge into the sea of feeling the abuse, the humiliation, the shame, and the fear. My husband’s despair at watching me sink beneath the surface was etched in his face and his pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor of our bedroom where I laid in bed for months.
“Why are you following me? This isn’t somewhere you belong.”
“Because,” he said to my bowed head, “you’re the best part of me so I’m staying.”
It got worse. But then it got better. Swimming the channel to the edge of insanity and back was exhausting but worth the trip. It was quiet again. The water’s threatening swell receded, leaving behind the sound of birds and grandchildren laughing on the shore where I washed up breathing the salty air deeply into lungs that had expelled stagnant water. One Sunday morning when the sunrise wrestled its way through my closed lids, I got up and went to the levee but the levee was dry. Tell me you didn’t just sing along. Welcome back from the depths of recovery.
“We made it!” I sing into the wind, the sound of rushing waters echoing back from far away, a place I’ve not forgotten.
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Looking for your next book to read? Consider this…
Women, the exhilarating novella by Chloe Caldwell, is being reissued just in time to become your steamy summer read. The Los Angeles Review of books calls Caldwell “One of the most endearing and exciting writers of a generation.” Cheryl Strayed says ‘Her prose has a reckless beauty that feels to me like magic.” With a new afterward by the author, this reissue is one not to be missed.
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