Page 109 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Pastor Sean uses the emotion whipped up by the moment with me to urge others in the Altar Call.

And I mentally nope right on out of my body and all those strangers touching me, enemies to my true well-being, and land somewhere near the ceiling, the children’s song my only tether.Jesus loves me, this I know…

TWENTY-EIGHT

LENNON

The headaches come backsomething fierce.

Brutal and unrelenting, I spend the first half of the week back at Jake’s locked away in the guest room with the shades drawn and a sleep mask covering my eyes because it’s still too bright.

All I can do is lay in bed, miserable, and listen to audiobooks because my eyes are too pained to be able to even read.

Right back where I began.

My only solace is that things are starting to get fixed for August.

Hopefully he’s getting right back to wherehewas before I landed like a tornado in his life. We can forget we ever met each other and it can be… just like it never happened.

Sometimes, in the long dark of the day, or the even longer dark of night, it does feel like a dream.

A wonderful dream I came up with all in my head, as an escape from this bleak nightmare.

Especially since Jake is… kind again.

He cooks me meals. Set up a big water tank beside my bed and always reminds me how important it is to hydrate. Brings me coffee in the morning.

It’s hard to remember that I hate him when he’s my lifeline to survival.

If that’s what this is.

I’m not sure anymore.

I only drag myself out of bed on Thursday at noon for work. And even then, it’s more like I drag the workintobed with me. As in, I pull about four pillows into a perfect configuration behind me so I don’t have to hold any part of my body up, and then pull my laptop desk onto my lap.

And feel immediately tired from the exertion and like going back to sleep.

I breathe out and let my eyes shut.

Ugh, God. The headache pain has me nauseous and brain fogged as all get out today. My body is clearly not happy with me that I’ve come back here.

I listened toThe Body Keeps the Scoreyesterday and it all suddenly clicked about why I have these bouts of my body absolutely rebelling like this. Trauma has to have somewhere to go, and it will eat you alive from the inside out if it has to. My body is screaming at me that we don’t want to be here.

Sorry, body. For the moment, we just gotta work through the pain.

I fire up my laptop and blink through my small open eye-slits, allowing in all the light I can.

I remember the first time I got sick. Just a few years after we’d gotten married and I was already so unhappy and restless. It was a heartbreaking time all around. I’d gotten pregnant but wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I was trying so hard to be happy.

When the migraines hit, I thought it was just pregnancy hormones.

I lost the pregnancy not much later. It was barely into the second trimester. Jake didn’t know why I cried so much, but he was still attentive when I was so ill. We got closer for a little while afterwards. Shared grief, you know. I felt horribly guilty. Like it was my fault.

Especially when the migraines returned on and off, usually when I was stressed. One more pregnancy lost, further along.

How was it not my fault, if I was the one allowing the stress to get to my body like that?

Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I thought I deserved the pain. I had done that to what might have become my babies.