Unpartnered

I graded nothing today.  The girls wanted to go to Greensburg.  I didn't want them to drive.  For one thing, if they wreck, no insurance coverage if it's our fault.  For another, I like Greensburg.  There is a Sonic there.  I do not know why Ebensburg and Greensburg do not get the H at the end of Pittsburgh.  I assume there is an answer somewhere, but I don't know it yet.

Well, we got into an argument.  I don't know now what started it.  It was hot and we found all the bargains yesterday, kind of slim pickings today.  Like that should influence your mood.  Retail therapy.  And so it finally came out of one of their mouth's that they didn't want me anyway, just my car.

I bawled.

There is nothing quite like being told someone only wanted to use you for what you have and not who you are to hurt.  We made up and she said she didn't mean it but it came out in anger.  Of course I understand that.  O the things I have said in diatribe.

And it isn't like I don't understand how they like to go be 20, 22, and 23 together and I am 49 and don't always fit in.  I don't even want to fit in a lot.  They are interested in stupid things that I already outgrew.  They were stupid when I liked them but being stupid I didn't know it yet.

They are going to eventually launch and I'm going to have the peace and quiet I want so desperately.  I'm going to travel and probably settle down somewhere to teach English and preach as much as possible and not have the demands of a family.  I have reconciled all this.  But that doesn't always keep lonely away.

I do know what it is like to be married and still be lonely, so I know the error of marrying too early too young and way too stupid.

When I went to visit Becky when I was 16 and she was 17, she asked me if I liked any brothers.  I told her of course.  She said no, just a certain one.  I said yes.  His name was Scott and he lived in the congregation between Frederick and Clinton.  He was very shy and never spoke to me, not a single word.  My mother always said she would see him looking at me at assemblies and skating parties.  I never caught him looking at me, even when we went to his going away party when he went to Bethel for a year.

Becky's only one was already at Bethel.  His name was Mark and they have just celebrated an anniversary, like oh, 32 of them by now?  I was so happy things worked out for her and I love looking at their pictures together.  I have a lot of married friends, and I revel in their happiness, but it was not to be for me.

***

I turned my father in for child abuse when I was 16 and I thought my mother was going to kill me.  I was afraid to go home with her.  She was so concerned with what everyone would think if they found out, and being a small town, they would find out.  I showed the case worker the bruises from my father's belt.  When we got home, my mother triumphantly told me the case worker told her that I was not hurt enough for it to be abuse, and she would close the case immediately.

I wondered how much was enough and declined to pursue it as long as everyone promised there would be no more "incidents," so I don't know what the caseworker thought or said.  The whole time I just wanted someone to figure out what else was going on, but no one ever did.  When I finally told my mother about it when I was 26 and pregnant with Carly, she didn't believe me.  It would have cost her too much to believe me.  At least after I reported the physical abuse, it stopped and so did the sexual abuse.  The verbal abuse, eh, not so much.

I could never marry a brother after what had been going on in my house.  As an adult, someone who got over being stupid, I now know it was not my fault.  But at the time, I could never find the nerve to report it.  In fact, about a week after the first time, there was a part on a meeting program about the Israelites and how a woman was required to scream if she was being raped, to fight, or else she was judged guilty.

I hadn't screamed or fought, too chicken and scared to death, and so when I heard that, I thought I must be as guilty as he was.  That's what a 12 year old will figure out with no one to talk to.

So, thinking myself a lost cause, my whole spiritual life eroded.  It does no good to think about the way things might have been if I could have married a nice brother and could now be celebrating anniversaries.  I am so grateful, just so grateful, that I finally got over the stupid and came back to Jehovah.  And everyday it still is an effort to think He could want me.

And that is what I pondered the whole drive back from Greensburg as all the girls put their iPods in their ears and we ignored each other.  Everybody has to carry his/her own load, and this is mine and others have loads I don't know anything about like they don't know mine.  They couldn't possibly brag about their husbands in front of me if they knew this.  I don't want to know this is where the magic happens when they show me their bedrooms they just redecorated.  I am happy he also rebuilt the kitchen from scratch for her and bought her a diamond for her anniversary.  I'm glad he changes the oil in the car and buys lingerie.  I wish someone was supporting my pioneer service.  And my children, how much I wish for a spiritual head, how much I want their eternal lives and I don't think I did a good enough job all alone.

I don't know if that is worse than the sisters who complain about their husbands to me.  Men fart, okay?  Get over it.

I last saw Scott at the DC in OKC in 1989.  I know because I was carrying baby Carly and I ended up following him around the corridor of the Myriad on my way to the mother's room.  A few years later he got married.  I doubt he noticed me; I hope he didn't.  I was fat and so busy with a baby I didn't spend much time on my grooming. 

Last year, a bunch of us from Windber congregation were all at Main Moon having lunch after Sunday meeting.  There was a single brother at the table, a few years younger than me, but taller, not bald, but dimples kind of make up for bald.

The waitress kept not getting me a diet coke.  When she finally came back by, before I could mention it again, he made sure she heard him say, and she needs a diet coke, and he pointed at me across the table and the way he said it was so sweet; it melted my heart.

That's so pitiful I know.  When one is partnerless, there is no one to take care of even the smallest needs, so when it does happen that way by accident, without meaning anything, it is a balm of blessing and a spasm of pain simultaneously.

I know this situation today is just growing pains.  The girls are about to launch and then all the time and attention and resources that they absorb, well, I can take care of those small needs myself then.


It's just hard when you wish someone wanted to go to Greensburg with you.