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THE BONE GATHERING: SEPARATING LIFE AND DEATH…

Writer's picture: Jayma Anne MontgomeryJayma Anne Montgomery

The outpouring of concern and responses to my last post was unexpected.  I had no inkling how many people were reading and cared so deeply about my husband and me.   I have no desire to leave anyone in suspense about the current state of our marriage.  We are still married and are very much committed to remaining that way.  However, I think it has really taken us this long to fully abandon any pretense or politeness with one another.  There is a degree of honesty in a relationship that feels terrifying when you’re not convinced you can recover from something.  The difference now is that, while I no longer expect the worst, I am no longer driven by the fear that it might come to pass.  It’s not exactly a comforting place to settle but it feels like the necessary next step in our relationship.

 

My therapist recently pointed out to me that some of my responses are reminiscent of an abuse victim. When she first said it, I immediately got defensive. My marriage might be dysfunctional but abusive...? That seemed like several bridges too far. But when I thought more deeply about it, I realized that the issue was deeper and far more diluted than identifying whether or not my husband has abusive tendencies. Abuse involves a response that a perpetrator has towards a person they are in a relationship with. It is often learned behavior, mimicked from prior relationships or an internal, pathological way our emotions process past trauma. The power of abuse rests in diminishing or denying it. The longer I go on denying the cross-relational and intergenerational effects it has had on me and my family, the longer it has free rein to erode the core of the relationships most precious to me.  Its time for me to re-examine the bones of my life and determine what is bringing life and what is bringing death.

 

It’s worth pointing out that, on the surface, living and dead bones look the same.  But living bone is a complex microsystem of various types of blood cells and blood vessels.  All of this is encased within a dense matrix that forms the scaffolding for our musculoskeletal system.  My point here is fairly simple.  The only way to know if bones are living or dead is to examine them from the inside.  If there is marrow, then there’s life.


I can reluctantly admit that my mother was verbally and physically abusive at times.  I can also admit that my father tended towards emotional negligence most of the time.  But to make a blanket statement that I grew up in an abusive household feels like a betrayal of some kind.  After all, my parents weren’t (and aren’t) bad people.  There were aspects of my childhood that were wonderful, and I truly believe that they did the very best they could.  But knowing that their intentions toward me were good doesn’t change the consequences of their pathological behavior toward me.  My fragile sense of self was bruised and battered repeatedly by their words, actions, and (in my dad’s case) lack of intervention.  If I don’t deal with the deep effects of these parental wounds, how is there any hope that I can become a healthy wife and parent to the husband and children I have been entrusted with?

 

And so, it’s worth stating again that my mother, with the best of intentions, was abusive towards me.  This was the way of her upbringing by her adoptive parents and is a very normal part of the upbringing of many impoverished households all over the world.  You respond differently to your children’s behavior when you're unsure where their next meal is coming from.  When there are constant threats to their safety and a lack of basic necessities, you sometimes have to make a choice between something bad and something even worse. 

 

Even being hundreds of miles removed from these threats and achieving socioeconomic stability could not fully subdue my mother’s inner demons.  The perceived threats remained just as real and just as close.  In her desperation to protect me from them, she created collateral damage to my psyche.  This is the sad truth of this part of my story.  But it’s not my whole story.  The question remains, what aspects of this dynamic have unknowingly crept into my marital relationship and parenting strategies?  When and where does my ability to reason shut off and I begin to operate purely out of fear?

 

Add to this the partially processed resentment I harbor towards my (step)Dad for not only spectating but enabling my mother's behavior only to rush to my sister's rescue a decade later. This is all very nuanced and complex as most familial relationships are.  My father and sister are blood relatives. My little sister had the type of personality that demanded our dad’s intervention.  My sister also had no qualms about manipulating him and pitting our parents against each other.  In what ways do I automatically hide or emotionally shut down when I begin to feel overwhelmed?  Did my mind learn to retreat to this as acceptable behavior for coping with certain hard things?  And how did my brain determine which things I needed to fight and which things I needed to run from?

 

It’s a strange thing to wish that your father had intervened against abuse but to be aware that, on some level, perhaps I was better off without it. It’s an even stranger thing to bear witness to the ashes of your parent's thirty-year marriage, initially deep from the inside and then from the outside, and not feel an ounce of pride that they chose to stay together. If one of the consequences of being raised by them is subconsciously perpetuating aspects of the abuse and neglect they inflicted on me onto my spouse, then I can’t help but wonder if I’m worthy of love at all. After all, my husband seemed like a wonderfully content person when I first met him. From my perspective, he doesn’t seem to be a better person for having met and married me and that deeply saddens me.


So, here’s the hardest part of all of this.  I want to know if I have become like my parents in the ways I most fear and, somehow, I need to accept the truth from my spouse without defending myself.  This means that no matter how many times my mind wants to travel back in time to find evidence of how unfair this all is, it doesn’t change the truth of what we are dealing with right now.  We were wrong and right about each other back then and we were wrong and right for each other back then.  Seemingly contradictory things can be true about people and situations all at the same time. 

 

I’m learning to let dead things stay dead and to let the dying go along with it.  Living is hard enough without inserting death dynamics into your relationships.  This is my call to those bones scattered over the face of the desert.  You are not dead…just lost.  Return to this body.  Return to your life.

 

Stay Thoughtful.

Jayma Anne.

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Immanuel Comer
Immanuel Comer
Oct 21, 2024

when it comes to love, particularly God’s love, whether any of us DESERVES love is not the question… For God, I think the question is does He know that we need His love if we are to become who He’s created us to be?


Is it possible that, through this need for love that God has brought you together with your husband? That in His divine wisdom, he emphasized the ways that you were right for each other nudging you both to marry? That while there has been challenges that both you and your husband are becoming more like Christ BECAUSE of your marriage to each other in ways that would not be achieved if you remained unmarried or married…

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