A-T-O-N-E-M-E-N-T

Atonement: at one with God; the restoration of man’s sinful being having been covered by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This, I get. I have no problems with this. I love this. This is what keeps me sane. I know that no matter how horrible a creature I am, that all my black is covered by the white of Christ. When I stand before God a broken, beat, sinful, ugly human full of filth and wretchedness in my life, what He sees is a whole, beautiful, pure human full of light, love, and perfection because Christ is standing in front of me covering all my wretchedness. God does not see the ugly, he sees His Son.

Atonement can also be defined as “the bringing together of two who have been enemies into a relationship of peace and friendship”. This particular definition is something that is very hard for me. Extremely, actually. This is something that is very hard for me to grasp, or even to want to grasp. And that in and of itself is very hard to admit, but admit I must. I am human. I am a human with a lot of baggage. I am a woman with a past full of failures. Failed love, failed family, failed life. I am someone who has survived, alone, through this road of life. I do not know how to do it any differently. I only know surviving. I know how to protect others. I know how to protect myself. I know how to defend. Defense is what I know best. Defense is something I learned at a very young age. There are many forms of defense. There is the physical. That form of defense for me was best used in the “just take it and it will be over soon” stance. There are other physical stances to take on and each has its place depending on who is needing the defense and who is projecting the offense. There is the protect stance, the one when we put our hands up over our face or chest or to hold up a leg like we are going to stop whatever is coming at us. Then there is the fist up and swinging stance that is a true fight back; this stance actually allows us to make attempts at protection as well as inflicting our own method of offense at the original offender.

I have used each and every one of these defensive stances at some point in my life. Some more than others. And what I have found is that I do not know any other stance. I do not know any other way to live than to be defensive. I can not take a compliment. I do not know what to do with it. My experience sends off all kinds of alarms in my being that says, “Wait, just wait for it. There is more to come. So stand guard; be ready.” Therefore I am always ready. I am always ready for the other shoe to drop.

Before I make any decisions I carefully think about every single scenario of outcome, especially when other people are involved. Growing up I always had to think about how my parents would react to something. I was never given the benefit of the doubt for anything. I remember one particular weekend when I was about fourteen, my sister was seven, my brother was eighteen and home from college that weekend. My parents were outside. my sister was inside, I was not home, and I do not remember where my brother was at that very moment. The phone rang and my sister answered it. the person on the other end was male and he asked to speak to me. She told him I was not there but would be back soon. He said, “Let me ask you a question then. What color are your panties?” She was baffled and did not know what to do. I do not remember being told if she ran and got my parents, or hung up first. When I got home I was attacked verbally by my parents. (I totally get the outrage they felt at what had happened and how my sister felt.) But they assumed I was behind it or knew who it was. I was yelled at and berated for hours because I refused to tell them who it was. To this day I still do not know who it was. To this day they think I know and will not tell. They didn’t ask me if I knew who it might be. They demanded it had to be one of my friends because he had asked for me by name. (Oh, the logic. DUH.)

Later that weekend my father found a Swastika painted on my brother’s car. Because he was out with friends in their car and I was in my room by myself it must have been my fault as well that someone (my friends) had done to his car. I was again attacked verbally demanding I tell them who did it. I was told how terrible my friends were for doing something like this and how dare I allow something like this to happen to my brother’s car. My father was in a tirade about how could anyone do that to his son and how much it was going to cost to repaint the car and so on. I mentioned that I had heard a little gasoline on a rag would wipe off fresh paint like that and then washing it quickly would not be perfect, but would work without removing the car’s paint. (The father of a friend of mine had a body shop.) Because I knew how to get it off then I must have known who did it and also been a part of it. I had to go out with a rag and a can of gasoline to scrub off the spray paint from my brother’s car. I thought I was going to die from the fumes. Again, all my fault. See the logic? Can you see me using my defensive tactics to great extremes that weekend? No questions were ever asked of me.

For what it is worth, my brother knew who did it and why they did it. They were no acquaintances of mine, but of him. Had he spoken up, he would have had to risk his family finding out a secret he did not want to share. I also had an idea of who did it, and I definitely knew why it was done. My father never figured that part out. And I was glad. I took the heat that time. Because I knew what my brother was scared of and I was not going to be the one to put him through that. I took the heat for my brother, a lot. I am still taking it. It is part of why I lost my family.

But what do you do when your own body can not atone with itself? What do you do when two sides of yourself, your life, are constantly at battle? What do you do when your body is its own enemy? How do you make your body have peace with itself?

There is a battle raging within me. One that has many times felt as if it was going to bring my marriage to an end. I hate this. I despise everything about being a woman and yet I know this is what makes me human. I hate the way I feel for four to six days every month. If it were just cramps - I would be fine. If it were just some soreness or tenderness in a few places - I would be fine. Even the extreme days of bedridden cramps and pain that rival the pain of childbirth would be acceptable. My husband does not understand. He does not get it. He never will. Not because he is slow on the uptake or not loving or not caring. But because he is a man. He will never know what it is like to feel this way. He will never experience (my side of) these hormones. My children do not understand. They get scared and cry and worry that Mama and Papa (mostly Mama) are at each others’ throats. I cry for my daughters. I cry that they too may one day have to go through this. Because they have my genes. I cry that any of my family has to witness this woman going crazy.

What I can not handle is this rage that lies so deep within waiting for just the right moment to strike. This all begins 48 hours before Aunt Helga arrives at my inbox. I have finally learned to recognize this tell-tale sign of anxiety and extreme annoyance and irritability with everything around me. Wednesday I caught myself and stopped myself from grabbing and throwing a votive across my office because I dropped my pen, again. For the fourth time that hour. When I know what it is and what is happening and what is causing it, I am able to control it. Mostly. I still find myself speaking crossly to anyone who dares talk to me. The next day is usually not as bad and the WHAM-O! I (and everyone around me) get slapped, hell, knocked across the house with Mrs. Hyde and I lose control with all my emotions. This is not some comical crying at the drop of a hat routine that even I could laugh at. This scares me. I hate this with every bit of passion that the rage instills in me. Two weeks ago my body was doing everything it could to get me pregnant. I hid it well. I did better than that - I ran for the hills screaming at the top of my lungs.

I spent two days reminding myself how sick I was this last time. How miserable I was this pregnancy. How much my family suffered because of what I was unable to do. Every second that my body ached to do what it was designed to do I just wanted to cry. I wanted to reach within me and rip out the offending parts. But what I really wanted was to give in and have it all. I was willing to go through all of that again. I was willing to throw out all my thoughts and fears and allow it to happen again. I find myself wanting so desperately to hate that part of being a woman. No. I am done with the child-bearing. I am not going to allow that to happen. Stay away from him. Do not look at him. Don’t kiss him. Don’t touch him. Ignore the hormones of desire. No matter how much my body protests at my arguing. No matter how much my body is preparing for what it wants - to every extreme available to its resources. Ignore it. Then hate it when it whips its wrath around on me for not obeying its desires and commands. If I gave in, if I allowed myself to fall at a weak moment, I (and my family) would be free from the rages my body is thrusting upon me/us.

I want to find a doctor who will just cut it all out of me and allow my body to settle down to something a bit more even. To give me some form of life or existence that does not require the Dr. Jekyll/Mrs. Hyde to exist separately, but to co-exist. I want my body to be reconciled unto itself. I want to stop hating my body and my thoughts and the roller-coaster life I put my family through. And yet to say this makes me feel so incredibly embarrassed and sad. I feel as if I am throwing my rage back at God for creating me this way. I am angry. I am angry at Him. I am angry that I have a child with disabilities. I am angry that her problems may be my fault. I am angry that I can not give her what she needs. I am angry that I am scared that I want my body changed and mutilated. I am angry that I want to use my body again to bring another (or as many) children into this world as God sees fit. I am angry that I do not have enough faith to accept that He will provide for us and my children. I am angry that we would have to get a bigger vehicle and would not be able to afford it. I am angry that I want to just let it all go and allow God to let it happen if He deems it so. I am angry that I can not fight the fundamental aspects of my body and the cycle God has given it. I am angry.

p.s. there is no 30 Tiny Moments today.

Tagged as: TMI