Closing the Gap
I never realized I was such a good liar until eight years ago.
I guess the first inklings of my gifting appeared when I was a child.
“Who ate that bag of potato chips?”
I stared my mom in the face, a film of salty oil still coating my finger tips, “Not me!”
I had already learned the rule that chubby twelve-year-olds have no right to a bag of chips after school; already learned that saying the truth brought shame. But those were little lies that only hurt me.
Eight years ago, I became a pro at a different sort of lie.
My bright green eyes stared at my husband, my high school sweetheart–a man who has studied my facial expressions and moods since I was fourteen–and made him believe. I told him all was okay between us; forced him to accept that we were walking down the same path even though I had jumped off onto my own diverging road long ago.
“Close the gap.”
I sat across from our organization’s psychologist in a conference room painted in cool gray with the residue of blue and red dry erase markers smudged across a white board. As a leader, I wanted to know the best piece of mental health advice that we could disseminate to our team.
“The most important piece of advice I can give for mental health is: close the gap,” he looked around the room and hoped we were all listening rather than wishing we could have one of the newly delivered Chick Fil A sandwiches losing precious fried chicken warmth in the break room. “You must close the gap between your public and private personas. Healthy and whole people have no difference between the person they present publicly and the one they know exists on the inside, in private–no secrets, hidden agendas, thoughts or addictions.”
Nick and I had always been a good bet for a marriage that would last. A round hat box filled with a decade of accumulated love letters was kept safe in a Minnesota storage unit. Nick’s messages were short and typed to disguise poor penmanship. My early letters were crammed to the edges with flowing words, signed in cursive, and always included my signature hand-drawn flower somewhere in the margins. But those artifacts were now evidence of a lost world.
Eight years ago, my career as a professional liar had taken off and I questioned if it was even possible to turn back home, to land on any portion of my heart that was still honest. We left Estonia and flew across the Atlantic Ocean to see if we could save something. Emerge Counseling Center’s waiting room was paneled in vinyl wood, the chairs a dirty form of mauve, and even single men, with no hope of fatherhood, were determined to keep their attention on the glossy pages of the latest parenting magazine rather than make eye contact with other troubled souls.
Our therapist called our names and guided us back into the warmth of her office. The Keurig coffee maker stood alert and ready to serve, and the walls were covered with framed inspirational quotes surrounded with birds and flowers in pale hues. Her short legs found their resting place on a wooden step stool in front of the armchair, and the session began. I was first, an hour alone to spill all the lies that had started to feel like a backpack of boulders strapped to my psyche.
She scribbled in her notebook and her face reflected complete calm in the storm I just erupted. “You’re going to make it,” she paused her writing and looked at me with a seriousness; waited long enough to let her words sink in. “Let’s bring Nick in and tell him why you feel that you no longer want to be married. You’ve never told him everything. He needs a chance to respond.”
I shook my head.
Too much time had passed.
Too many hurtful things for both of us to share.
Perhaps these same words had been spoken hundreds of times within those four walls to people just like me. She’d seen their power at work, and it seemed I was given no other option.
“He needs to know.” She left me alone with the gurgling of the coffee machine, and found Nick in the waiting room.
The hour that followed is a blur. I can’t remember the exact words said or how many cups of coffee Nick drank to drown his sorrows. The inspirational quotes muffled into hieroglyphics on the walls.
I cried out memories that seemed branded on my life; on our marriage. Nick shared his own. His kind eyes cried. He felt misunderstood. The thing he feared the most had come true—the person he chose to love, who knew him best, rejected him.
We left the therapist's office feeling like we had run an emotional marathon. My head pounded. My eyes had permanent red circles–rubbed raw from wet, crumpled tissues. On the drive home, we stopped at Starbucks, held hands, and didn't speak.
I wish I could say that a couple of calming sips from my chai latte and a good night’s sleep set everything right. The gap I allowed in our relationship had slowly formed, like a canyon forged from hard stone, trickle by trickle, over a decade.
I thought I had been kind; protecting Nick from the sting of my words–until that day. I wanted to be strong enough to bury real desires under a mound of prayer; hoping that bargains with God make escape plans disappear.
I wasn’t willing to acknowledge that healing comes after pain.
A surgeon must cut through skin and muscle to remove invisible, diseased tissue. I was a patient, constantly running away from the operating table. Instead of closing the gap, and letting all the spectators in the operating theater view my hidden sickness and shame, I chose to remain silent and die.
Closing the gap is always painful.
Shame screams at us, promising that secrecy is our great protector; the only way we remain safe. It retains power by keeping us speechless.
So, I’m here to scream back.
Aren’t you tired of entering every crowded room, every promising job, every hopeful relationship with shame’s mantra tattooed on your chest in some horribly ugly font?
The real, hidden me is unlovable.
I bury pain.
Hustling for your value, proving you’re worthy of the space you take up on earth, is exhausting. Buried pain never dies, but waits for the right time to emerge from the grave–destroying you and everything in its path.
Other fears don white lab coats and gather around the cold table formed from surgical steel; arms strapped down to control our inner fight.
If we close the gap, let others peer in past the surgeon’s incisions to the core of the real self, then no one {not even the highly paid doctors} will stick around.
We’re not sure we can survive the pain of a long recovery after closing the gap with our partner, our parents, our high school best friend. We allow the surgeon’s nimble hands to dig into the pain of how deeply they’ve hurt us. Buried thoughts are spoken and we give others the chance to know and respond. Some will choose to enter the lengthy process of rehabilitation with us–dressing the wounds for healing; re-learning, through pain, to sit up, leave the operating table and walk hand-in-hand again.
I almost didn’t publish this piece–unwilling to paint a story of complete healing when my body still tries to accumulate disease that I work to expose.
Last night, Nick and I had a fight that reminded me of standing at the edge of a precipice. When the trail is steep and my mouth is dry from too many words, I’m tempted to jump off of the path or run back into the canyon to find some deserted place to hide. I could develop my own story of the marriage, create another escape plan, listen to shame’s threats while devouring a bag of stale potato chips in the desert basin.
But this time it’s different.
I stay with Nick at the cliff’s edge, the view more bright than eight years ago.
Instead of lying, we say the truth–even if it rips open the calloused surgical scars.
Now, even when unable to speak from the exhaustion in our bones, I can reach out for Nick’s hand and know that we are climbing the same route, step by step.
We’ve closed the gap.
And wow! I never realized how tired I was when I entered that counselor’s office.
I’m no longer limping through life, buckling under the weight of carrying a bulky backpack of secrets; shame’s whip cracking at the back of my bare legs telling me there is no other way out of the pit.
I threw off that pack of stones. My tired legs cast off dusty hiking boots.
The bare soles of my soft feet slapped against the sharp rocks and gravel of the trail.
I cringed, but I kept walking.
Nick waited on the other side of the cliff with those kind, blue eyes.
I chose the pain and jumped.
God helped me fly.
I closed the gap.
I am known. I am free.
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