DEPRESSION

April 30, 2021 By HallieZ 4 Comments

WE. DO. NOT. FORGIVE YOU

We are standing next to one another, all of us, who were impacted by the arrest of Josh Duggar by federal agents, yesterday.

We are the daughters. The sons. The sisters. The brothers. The wives. The ex-wives.

We are the shunned. The fractured.

We are the voice that will not be silenced.

We don’t believe there is any justice, and yet, we fight for it every day of our life.

We aren’t sure there is a way out of this tar pit called life, but we keep moving, and we hold every inch of progress we make.

We can’t stop crying today.

We had put our crying on hold for a bit, bottled the grief up, put a cork on it. But the cork got popped again, yesterday. Sometimes that happens.

We are ok with that.

We were children.

We stood over chairs, your lap, over toilets, with our pants pulled down, and you beat us with sticks. With belts. With electrical wire.

We held the books you bought at the conferences, that taught you how to do this without going to jail.

We dressed in tents, in jeans too big, dresses that tried to drown us in the rivers where we played.

We were children.

You taught us that our bodies were not ours to give.

But you took what you wanted, and called that God.

YOU LIED.

We understood, we obeyed.

You put the books of another Josh in our hands, and said those were God’s words. THEY WERE NOT.

We were children.

You kept us from our grandparents, our cousins. You kept us from our neighbors and the world that longed to show us something more… not perfect, not always good, but something bigger, something REAL. You hid books, and stories, and faces that looked different from ours, and called that GOD’S WILL.

You lied.

Some of us were born with a uterus, with breast. Blood that came from our body in clumps, or a stream, a curse, and a gift.

We were named Jezebel.

We were called rebellious.

We stood in the shadow of shame, while you told us who we were.

We stood in the shadow of heresy, while you told us what God wanted us to be.

We read the stories of the witches, because we both feared and loved them.

I am a woman. But I know you have hurt my brothers just as much as you hurt me. And I will not dare speak for them, you spoke for them long enough. And you LIED to me about who they were. When you lied to them about who I was? You stole their future. You stole their success. You wounded generations, and you will answer for it.

WE. DO. NOT. FORGIVE YOU.

When you told her an education and career would be a waste resources, because she’d be busy raising the children? You lied.

When you looked your daughter in the face, and told her “your husband didn’t commit adultery because his penis didn’t GO INSIDE HER VAGINA, and therefore God will NOT allow you to divorce him”.

When you learned your sons had molested your daughters, and you put them on farms, and in “restoration” programs, and NOT IN JAIL, YOU BETRAYED US.

When you saw bruised and broken children, and you “mentored” their parents and did not protect the children.

When you banned us from family gatherings, because we did not “submit” to your patriarchal rule.

When you gathered around one another, and created an echo chamber and egged each other on to further abuse.

WE. DO. NOT. FORGIVE YOU.

August 7, 2018 By HallieZ 1 Comment

13 Things I Learned

Today is my 15^th wedding anniversary. Crystal.

Today is also my first wedding anniversary as a divorced woman.

We don’t say much, on these days, those of us with the “failed” marriages, who dwell in “broken” homes.

We are kind of outliers… those of use who were married longer than average, but aren’t any more. We lurk in the shadows… conversations about husbands… futures… sort of trail off when we walk up. It’s weird, to have your identity be linked to another person, so intimately, so entirely, and then be, well, just, you.

I learned a lot in my marriage.

It was one of the most amazing, passionate, heartbreaking, hopeful, growing things I have ever done in my life.

I left my husband.

I filed for divorce 3 months after our 13^th wedding anniversary.

That was the bravest thing I have ever done in my life.

My divorce was finalized a few months before my 15^th anniversary.

Timelines are important to me.

They help me make sense of the years I spent with him. Sometimes, I write them out, as I search for answers, as I try to figure out which pieces fit, look for the signs I missed.

Sometimes, I want to share marriage advice with young grasshoppers, but I feel like I can’t, because my marriage is over.

I don’t actually believe my marriage failed.

I don’t believe I live inside a broken family.

And I think, on the subject of marriage, I have something to offer.

So. Today. I give you…

one for every year I was married

Words don’t matter much. I BELIEVE what my partner is telling me with his actions.
My love is NOT going to heal my partner’s wounds. My love can only be a part of the healing they choose.
No partner will ever know me like I know myself.
No partner gets to define who I am. They get to be a part of my life, my story, and that is a gift to us both.
I never want a partner to be with me because he HAS to, I want him to be with me because HE CHOOSES me.
Adultery can be forgiven
I can say NO. No means NO, even in marriage.
Saying I DO was not blanket consent covering all things until the day I died.
Forgiveness is a process, and its ok to come back to the reason we need forgiveness in the first place.
I am worth fighting for.
My children are worth fighting for.
I am capable of more love than I ever dreamed possible.
I am lucky, blessed, honored, to have had those 13 years.

And a bonus for the year I was separated but still married:

14. Marriage doesn’t define us, we define our marriage.

All the pain, all the love, all the hope, all the joy, all the freedom, all the gifts that came?

I think they were worth it.

April 1, 2018 By HallieZ 3 Comments

Find Me Tomorrow?

You seem very far away, this weekend, up on that cross, Jesus.

Or in the tomb.

Or whatever.

I am unable to access the emotions that defined 37 years of Easter Weekends.

This was the holiday he chose to introduce me to his family.

This was the time of hope, life, all bursting out and up.

I feel numb.

I am shaking a fist at you, in my heart.

Why are you doing this? Is it for a perfect forever after? The eternal to come?

Because F*** that, I scream at you,

I want heaven HERE.

It is less depression this year, and more grief.

Do you know what it is LIKE?

ALL MY SIBLINGS… their spouses, my parents. 13, 14 people? Just gone from my life? My husband. The people who should have had my back NO MATTER WHAT. The people who had pledged to love and care for me… Gone.

Forsaken?

Maybe God forsook you, Jesus, but your mom was still there.

What if they had all died in a plane crash, I ask you. What if I was the only one who survived? The grief of that would be enough to kill the average girl. This feels worse. They are dead to me but alive and I don’t know how to grieve the living.

Jesus-on-that-cross. I don’t know how to connect with you. I feel the loss of the old ways, the steady in my tracks normal ways of doing these religious days. I believe you to be real, but all that gives me is a numb sort of peace, today.

I vomit the fear and the worry and the anger out at my friend. She served you too, overseas. We served you SO DAMN HARD. We loved you and it was all for you… and this being forsaken and left alone still happened to us.

What are we supposed to feel? We ask the question of each other, and don’t mind that the other doesn’t have an answer.

I shared a joke on my facebook wall today… about the women at the tomb.

It was funny, and ironic, and it started sinking into my grief-logged brain this afternoon.

I AM these women.

You’re dead and gone and I am lost, forsaken, alone.

Religion kept me from pouring out my love and grief in the days right after your death, so I have finally come today.

I have no hope for resurrection, but with every beat of my heart, I am screaming at God to give me something, anything, to hold on to.

Tonight I wash dishes. (notice how much deep thinking is happening over my sink?)

I imagine myself, walking with the women I love through the garden, toward your tomb. I imagine what I would be feeling, what I would be thinking. I imagine the weight of the grief may feel somewhat similar to the grief I have felt all day as I think of my family.

I want to be first to the tomb. I want to lay my head on your chest, and let the tears fall. I want to beat you with my fist and scream out my anger and fear. I don’t know where you went, but I want you to come back.

I want you to hold me, and tell me the pain was worth it.

I want you to wipe away the blood and the tears.

I want you to wash away the sweat and the exhaustion.

I want heaven HERE, dammit.

I want to the behold the resurrection and the life. I do not want to sit in the darkness of sorrow.

Jesus on-the-cross. Here I am, tonight.

The moon is rising, but it’s dark all around me, and I am numb.

Just me.

Jesus in-the-tomb.

Find me tomorrow?

March 25, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

TOO MUCH

Be quieter

Hold your tongue

Just listen

You. Are.

TOO LOUD

You don’t need to cry

You are just being emotional

Enough already.

You. Feel.

TOO MUCH

You asked for it.

You knew this would happen.

It’s RIGHT.

Your Grief.

TOO MUCH

Too Free.

Tone it down.

Flirting. Misleading.

Your smile.

TOO MUCH

You.

Who you are.

Your desire.

Your dreams.

The passion.

Your energy.

Your truth.

Your love.

Always. ALL WAYS.

You are.

TOO MUCH

We. Are. All. Done. With. You.

October 27, 2017 By HallieZ 2 Comments

My First Night in My New House

It’s our first night in our very own little home. It’s my home, for me and my kids, our new way of being a family. Its terribly hard to do this without a spouse. I don’t regret the divorce. No, not at all. But I grieve, again, the things that never were and the dreams that never came true. I am sad that I don’t have the husband I always hoped to have, at this point in my life.

Also, I feel like the flippin’ bad-a**edest girl EVER. A few weeks ago a rented my own U-haul truck. Yup. And I drove it MYSELF. Yup.

I installed curtain rods, a plant-hanger, and assembled a bunk bed in my kids’ room.

I didn’t do these things during my marriage, because we participated in very rigid gender rolls. I did ALL housework and daily grind stuff, he did the “man” things like hooking up the washer and dryer when we moved. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to do those things, or didn’t feel I was capable, those were just the only things he would do, and I always felt I did them “wrong”, so I left them to him, and did all the other things.

Panic and anxiety, my old friends, kick into high gear anytime I tackle one of the these tasks I haven’t done in 13 years. I am SO afraid of doing it wrong. Of screwing up. But as the fear of failure fades away with the marriage I left, I jump on one new things after another, with renewed energy and courage.

This house is a mess, tonight. The walls are half-painted, the floor is filthy. Some of my boxes are still in the storage unit. I wasn’t sure we were spending the night here, so I don’t bring any of our gear with us. Kids are using rolled up towels for pillows… My room has this wallpaper border that, well, lets just say it isn’t EXACTLY my taste. I have painted some samples on the wall, but I bet I won’t get to my bedroom for a few weeks or so.

I am scared to settle in here, desperate to settle in here. I want it so much, a few years here. But it seems like too much to hope for. Why would something go well, when so much has gone so, so wrong for so long? Is it worth making my bedroom a haven, if only for a year?

This place is a dream I didn’t know I had coming true. Sure, the bugs and the spiders and the mice come with it, but I gather that all up into my heart, with the smell of the cedars out my door, and I breath deeply.

P.S. after writing this, I closed the computer, turned off the light, and lay down in my bed. To my shock, when I looked up at the popcorn ceiling, I saw 3 foot deep GLOW IN THE DARK paint saying

“LOVE ME”

I can’t stop laughing.

What I’m Writing