That Time God Yelled at Me

and boy were they pissed

I didn’t leave my husband. He left me. And for exactly 7 minutes it gutted me.

It was an average morning. A workday - for him - I wasn’t working outside of the home because “I couldn’t make enough money to make it worth it” (his words upon declaring I should be a stay at home wife - that’s a separate topic). 

It was January 8, 2012 or 2013 (?). I never can remember the damn year, which seems important somehow. Shouldn’t the date God spoke to you be forever imprinted on your mind? I suppose it means the scars have completely faded, if I don’t even remember when I got them. 

It was the day after his birthday. We had been in the middle of a very rough patch. My mental health had never been worse. He had never been less kind or sympathetic. 

The night before, for his birthday, I had made a really big effort. He had even acknowledged it, thanked me sweetly for dressing up, going out, making small talk with strangers - being a wife he could be proud of!

It felt like we could see the corner we were about to turn. I would make an effort! He would reward my effort with kindness. We would be okay! 

He was dressed and ready for work. I went to kiss him goodbye.

He told me it was over.

I lost it. 

LOST IT.

Now, here’s the thing about me, I am someone who feels things deeply. I cry at long distance commercials (okay, I used to since those aren’t a thing anymore), I don’t watch the news because it guts me every single time. I don’t watch violent tv or movies for the same reason, but I am not a person prone to hysterics. If I get to a wild place with yelling and crying, something is deeply wrong and has been for a long time. 

I am a problem solver. I am the kind of person who says, “oh shit, this isn’t working, how do we make it better?” and I make a plan. I execute that plan. I do not lose it. I am the person you want in an acute crisis (I am not, however the person you want in a chronic stress situation because I require a lot of naps and snacks and I will annoyingly point out all the things people in power are doing to perpetuate nonsense and people in power hate it when you do that). 

But in this moment, I totally lost it. 

Sobbing, begging, crying. I had a full on toddler temper tantrum level reaction. I was on the floor. I was yelling. I was sobbing. I was beating my fists against the floor. If I had been an actual toddler the old school parents would have barked a short, “get up” before picking me up and removing me from the scene. The gentle parenting crowd would have let me cry it out, perhaps kneeling down and saying things like, “it’s okay to be upset”.

He watched me with a passive expression.

I demanded couples therapy. I had asked for it before. He had always refused. I was the broken one, not him.

He replied placidly, “Okay, but I don’t think it’ll do anything. I don't want to be here.”

You hear stories about God speaking directly to people. They say things like “I just knew” or “I heard a little voice” and I didn’t go down the alley and then the news said that two women were murdered there that night.

At that moment, God spoke to me. (I’m using the name God here though you could swap in source/universe/Goddess, etc and it would be the exact same)

I knew I would be okay. 

I knew the path forward without him was the one that would lead me home.

In a split second, my tears stopped. Fear evaporated.

I stood to my full height. Eyes clear and bright.

“Get the fuck out. I won’t be here when you get back.”

I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. 

He hesitated a moment as I stared him down, daring him to try and change his mind. I did not want him to change his mind. 

He left, looking back over his shoulder for just a moment. His mouth fell open as if he meant to speak. He said nothing. He walked out, closing the door gently behind him.

And it was over. I packed a bag and left. We filed paperwork within the month, by June I had my name back.

Recently, my therapist asked me what I was feeling at that moment. When I was broken in tears on the floor. I had always assumed it was despair. I had felt punched in the gut. It was despair obviously. Grief! Rejection! 

Why would someone even need to ask that?

When I replied, the answer shocked me, “I was afraid.”

I was afraid? 

I was afraid. The tears, the sobbing - it was fear.

In that moment, the tears were of terror. How would I do it on my own? I was unemployed! I was far away from my family. I had no career because I had left mine for his. I wasn’t a whole person!

“You can’t make enough money to make it worth you working outside the home,” his words echoed in my head. I needed him to survive! I wasn’t the woman I once was! Gone was the precocious, fierce, independent woman who could do it all. Gone was the brave and bold woman who moved to Los Angeles at 18 from her tiny hometown in the midwest. She wasn’t there anymore. 

She hadn’t been there in years.

How would I do it? How would I live without him?

I was scared out of my mind.

I always wondered why, in that moment of terror, I did not hear words to ease my pain or advice on saving my marriage. That voice just barked at me. “Get up. We’ll be fine.”

God barked at me! God yelled at me in my darkest moment - God YELLED at me! 

God also gave me a vision. I saw myself young and free. Brave and bold and fearless of failure. The girl who was unafraid of who she was and what she wanted. A young woman running joyfully and bright in the big wide world. Heart on her sleeve and big booming voice shouting over the crowd to join her in her wild.

She was not lost, she was just shut away in a closet. In that split second, free of the shackles of this marriage, unburdened by a relationship with a man who was so afraid of my light that he stood atop the bucket he kept over me - she unlocked that closet door. 

It was her voice I heard. “We’ll be okay.”

I never cried for that marriage after that day. I was curious if I had just repressed it because it was too hard to face (I have a habit of repressing grief, it’s a thing okay?). In reality, I had grieved every day of my marriage. I had grieved for the woman I had slowly shut away. I grieved for the light that had slowly gone out, the destroyed dreams and the wreckage of a life crushed by that marriage.

Maybe it was God who spoke to me. Maybe it wasn’t. 

Wherever that voice came from, I have never been more grateful to be yelled at in my darkest hour. 

Get up. We’ll be okay.