The World Was Quiet

It was a Wednesday evening when we had our last call before he checked in to the inpatient program. My phone rang as I walked in to a worship service at church. When I saw his number, blood raced to my cheeks and my heart rate escalated. I expected his phone to not be accessible by this point, with limited and monitored phone calls for the next several days. It was one last “checking-in” call while he was enroute to the facility. My patience was non-existent by this point. I was less than 24 hours from the previous check-in call, when he informed me he chose to continue relations with an affair partner in the weeks leading up to inpatient. One last trauma-bomb for the road. I was ready for several days of silence.

For fourteen years, up to and including our separation, my then husband routinely and frequently checked in. I used to think it was sweet. As the years went on, these check-ins became more flat. Regardless of what I replied, where I was, who I was with, or how my day was actually going, it was as if he was somewhere else, and the check-in was simply a formality. If I did not respond to a check-in, however, the tides turned. Immediately. Disinterested became hypervigilant. There was an evident and imperative need for a response. This became acutely obvious when I would leave our marital home, and he would call to ask where I was going, and wanting to know when I returned home, regardless if he was gone the entire day or traveling for business. This became acutely obvious, when I was 50 miles away for a therapeutic separation, and he wanted to know what my plans were, and when I went to bed at night. There was a time I believed this was an act of love; a geninuine concern for my well-being. I didn’t awaken to what was actually happening to my mind and body with these frequent check-ins, until the world was quiet.

I had planned a trip that just happened to fall at the beginning of the inpatient stay. I traveled to a cozy southern town that had been on my bucket list for years. I grabbed the rental car and drove immediately to a state park. I parked and had my shoes off before the gritty concrete met the soft, February-cool, sand. I was instantly relieved to be escaping winter for the warm, southern sun. The view in front of me was beach for miles and only a few, likely locals, out on a week day stroll. I paused before I made my way onto the beach, tilted my head up to the sun, and took the deepest inhale exhale in days. A woman casually grazed my right arm as she walked by with her beach chair and said, “felt like we were never going to get here!” I smiled, as a single tear traversed my cheek. She was gone before she could hear my spoken reply, “You have no idea…”

I went to the local grocery store and strolled up and down every aisle, picking out my favorite snacks. And the world was quiet. I unpacked and made dinner reservations, and put on a beautiful new dress. And the world was quiet. I sat solo among a Saturday night restaurant crowd and ordered every appetizer on the menu. And the world was quiet. I strolled into quaint shops and ate pie in a rocking chair that faced the water. And the world was quiet. I journaled, I prayed, I slept in a queen size bed without my phone nestled beside my head on the adjacent pillow. And the world was quiet.

It became curiously, then abundantly clear to me during those several days, that my world had been anything but quiet. I had been living in a world where my eyes would dart to my phone every few minutes to not miss any calls. Calls that held so much control and no healthy significance. A world where my heart leaps into summersaults when I see an unknown number, wondering if it is the next woman trying to find me.

I wrapped up this trip and the days of silence with awakenings.

I desperately did not want to return to the chaos.

And I was terrified of what getting out of the chaos would require.