I was on tour when I felt my first marriage begin to end. It was an unraveling; no, it was something else—it had to be.
I didn’t say my doubts out loud, but I spent a lot of time listening to songs that spoke variations of we’re gonna be okay. I’d walk to the theater with my earbuds in and throw the lyrics at my heart, try to make them stick.
Our conversations had changed. He had less questions for me, didn’t try to see me. His words were once a magnifying glass—my answers a revelation—but now they were short, perfunctory, as quick as possible, like a procedure he just wanted to be over. Often he’d get angry, suddenly unfamiliar, and I’d sink down, turn my tired little songs up louder because we’d be okay (wouldn’t we?).
On the road, I was living with three dear friends in one hotel room and I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anyone. At night I’d lay in bed and play rounds of solitaire on my phone, the blue screen illuminating my drawn face until I’d finally close my eyes and still see spades and clovers and numbers, all organized and making sense and none of it hurting me.
But sometimes even the solitaire wouldn’t work. My thoughts would find a way to speak, my fears would tell me stories, my sadness would present itself like the first time I saw Lake Michigan and thought, How could this be only a lake? Surely this is the rest of the world. I didn’t know the prayer for the woman whose husband was slipping away. I wasn’t ready to say the words if I had.
I learned how to cry without making a sound. I learned to take deep, even breaths that didn’t alarm anyone. I’d blink and tears would fall from the corners of my eyes into my ears, my pillow, my hair and I’d lay there wet and silent, baptized by grief, by a story I didn’t dare tell.
After my son Luca died, I’d lay in bed with all of my insides—my veins and sinews and bones and heart—turned to water. I was the rain, a storm, unrelenting and overflowing. I was bleeding, lactating, sobbing; I was soaking my sheets and pads and clothes and days and nights. My insides and outsides were gushing, a flash flood; I was endless, the water that covers the earth, and to ask for silence was like hushing a hurricane. I’d curl onto my side, crying until TJ’s arms were around me, his breath on my neck dry land. A place to stand, finally.
TJ wasn’t asking me for quiet, he was telling me he was here, too. (God, the word “too” can save a whole soul, I think.) He wasn’t afraid of water. My sobs would stir him in the night and even his sleeping body would respond, curling himself around me, his foot touching mine, a language of toes touching and presence, presence, presence.
He was a steady reminder of good. Of the words in Psalms, something about passing through the Valley of Weeping—of our tears making a well. All the water not for nothing. Others stumbling by later, thirsty, finding that well.
All the water not for nothing.
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My podcast with TJ has a whole library of episodes and we’ll be adding to it from time to time. Listen to The TJ [& Jess] Show here.
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