40. A Safe Place

A Safe Place

M ara

Saturday morning, I woke up early, earlier than Zale even. I slipped from our bed and quietly made myself a coffee. The sun shone brightly through the sunroom windows, evidence that spring was easing toward summer. I pulled my cardigan over my pajamas and stepped out into the yard in my bare feet, the grass cool and wet with the morning dew, the sun still low in the sky.

At the back of our garden, nestled amongst my scattered flower beds, my bench beckoned me to sit awhile. I settled in with my coffee and surveyed the flower beds that I’d allowed to be taken over by weeds. I’d neglected my gardens this year .

My diagnosis shocked me to my core, and I’d been overwhelmed. This past week Olivia and I had gotten our hands back into the dirt, getting the flower beds closest to the house in order, but back here there was still much to do.

I rested my empty mug on the seat beside me and dropped to my knees beside the closest bed. I prodded, twisted, and pulled at the weeds, yanking them out and making space for the emerging flowers to breathe.

The ground, hard and forgiving, not yet having been properly turned, resisted my efforts, yet, the tender new sprouts had prevailed, pushing up through the dust, defying the weeds that threatened to choke the life out of them. They persevered, bringing forth beauty from the hard packed earth.

I forced my hands further into the dirt, digging my fingers under that tough top layer, uncovering the hidden earth beneath, the richer soil that provided a foundation for the roots and nurtured the growth.

I thought about the past year, my mother’s increasing criticism as Olivia started to spread her wings, making our schedule too busy to visit as much as she wanted. I thought about Olivia, craving greater independence, and the behavioral changes that came with the influx of hormones. I thought about Zale’s emotional distance, his long work hours, and the pain of his rejections in bed. I thought of my increasing anger, the intolerable suffering fueled by my doubt and my fear, and the ways I’d lashed out at him, as well as the ways I’d hurt myself. I thought about my mother’s rejection of my needs, and then, of me.

My tears fell, splattering the earth under my hands. I pushed and pulled at the earth, making space for the beauty that dared to emerge even so. With my hands in the dirt, I always felt an affinity with God, in partnership with Him, and I willed Him to create something of beauty in me, to overturn the dry, cracked earth of my fear, heal my broken heart, and give me wisdom to choose well what to believe.

To produce something beautiful in me, I would need to do the work, creating space for myself to breathe, thinning that which threatened to choke me. A new growth, hope, propelled her way forward. I could do the work to heal, and that healing would make me strong, and strong is beautiful. The tears I had shed over the past year had softened the earth, and hope led me to believe that I could be good for Zale and Olivia, and that we could move forward, together, without guilt.

I smiled even as I vowed to be patient with myself. As Cinderella’s fairy godmother said, ‘Even miracles take a little time’.

“Baby? You okay?” Zale stood a few feet away, legs braced, hands hitched on his lean hips, watching me with concern. I turned a watery smile in his direction.

“I can be a safe place for you.”

His eyes darted to the side, confused. “What do you mean? ”

“I can make space for myself to breathe, to heal. I can get better, get the borderline stuff under control so it’s not a burden and I can be an emotionally safe place for you. I can get stronger, be a comfort to you instead of a stress, just as you have been a comfort to me.”

While I spoke, he moved toward me and knelt beside me in the grass, shaking his head. He reached out his hand to cup the back of my head.

“Mara, you’ve always been my comfort. You’ve always been my soft place to land. Every night I climb into bed beside you and all the hours since I left you in the morning are worth it. You are my life, my happiness, everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I’ll ever need. I needed to be a safe place for you.”

And there it was, the other half of the problem. I needed to be safe for him, but I needed to feel safe, too, and I didn’t always.

“I don’t know if you love me.”

“Why?” He asked gently, then waited patiently while I sifted through the evidence.

“I cry myself to sleep and you don’t notice. I try to kiss you and you turn away. I leave our bed, and you don’t follow. I tried to talk to you about my pain and you’d get angry.” I searched his face, looking for answers. “I don’t deserve that.”

He held my gaze, his eyes filled with remorse. “You’re right.” He took a deep breath. “There were a couple of things going on that led to all of that. I’m just going to admit it right now, there’s no excuse, but there is a reason, and it was never that I didn’t love you. Will you hear me out?”

My tears slid silently down my cheeks. The pain of the past year always bubbled close to the surface since the cork had been blown off the bottle. I nodded.

He gently palmed my face, wiping away the tears, and began to explain.

“The first reason, for which I am incredibly sorry, is that I misinterpreted your actions.” He winced. “In my head, I thought you were trying to manipulate me, and I thought you were being immature.”

I felt my face crumple. “Zee, I told you, I explained it to you over and over. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t pushed me away!”

He kept his hands on my face and pulled me closer when I tried to draw away from him.

“You’re right, and you’re not right.” He paused, a hint of trepidation on his handsome face. “It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t pulled away, but baby, the problem would still be there, sex was just a band aid. You were suffering. And, I hesitate to say this, but we both know that you can’t hold me responsible for correcting the imbalance, especially when I didn’t understand it.”

I nodded. Over-responsibility again. This time, me making him responsible for my mental stability .

“You’re right, it was a band aid, barely holding me together. It was all I had at the time, and I need to be responsible for my mental health.”

“Now that I know, if I still turned away from you, without making sure you’re okay, knowing the pain it causes you, I would be remiss.” He waited for my nod. “Can I explain the other reason? This one will be easier to hear.”

“Go ahead,” I answered. My voice hitched, but the tears were drying up at least.

“I have been focused so far into the future, Olivia’s future, worrying about setting up finances for her care thirty, forty, fifty years from now, that I neglected the present. It was stress, fatigue, and anxiety about Olivia’s future, and how I would ever be able to provide for her lifetime. It was never about not loving you or not wanting you. I just lost focus on what was important in the here and now.”

“You didn’t listen to me; you didn’t believe what I was telling you. I tried to talk to you, I tried to explain, I was trying to understand, I even asked questions trying to understand, and you got angry with me.”

“You’re right. I was not always a safe place for you, Mara. You say you need to be safe for me, but I need to be safe for you as well. You don’t always believe me when I tell you how I feel. Seems I didn’t believe you either. Instead of believing each other, we reinterpreted, to make it fit with what we thought was true. ”

This was quite the revelation, but one last hurdle loomed, one that followed me like a malevolent shadow, one I knew I had to get out from under if I hoped to truly heal.

“I treated you horribly at times, especially in the beginning, especially at that conference for your work.” I held his eyes, sorrow in mine. I’d always felt like he’d never forgiven me for the way I’d hurt him in our early years. I was still afraid to ask, but I forged ahead. “Will you forgive me?”

Zale pointed at himself. “Let me ask you the same thing. Will you forgive me?”

I shrugged, and smiled into his worried eyes, offering forgiveness. “You didn’t know.”

He dipped his chin closer, his expression sweetly serious. “Neither did you.”

He leaned forward and kissed me gently, then wrapped his strong arms around me, gathering me close and tight against his big chest and tucking my face into his throat. I hugged him around his lean waist and breathed in deeply. Decisions were made in the space of that breath, and my tension fell away as I exhaled.