Nobody Knows How Alone I Am

There are four women who would say they know you well.

One of them has known you since school. One of them prays with you on a Thursday. All four would describe your marriage in warm and general terms if somebody asked them about it at a party.

And not one of them knows.

You have not lied. That is the strange part, and it is why it has been possible to keep going. You have simply answered a question with a true sentence that was not the whole sentence, several hundred times, over about six years.

Before we go one step further, there is something I have to say and it is not a footnote.

If the person you live with frightens you, controls you, hurts you, or has made you smaller and more afraid than you used to be, then none of what follows applies to your situation and I am not going to dress that up in the language of promises. That is not a marriage being kept alone. Nobody who cares about you would tell you to keep absorbing it. Talk to somebody qualified where you live, this week, and if there is danger in that house, contact an emergency service or a domestic violence line today.

For everybody else, this article is about a woman keeping a promise on her own in a house where nobody is frightening anybody, and about the specific weight of doing that where nobody knows.

He turned toward the desolate one

There is a line in Psalm 25 where a man says something about himself that most people would not say out loud.

Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted (Psalm 25:16, King James Version)

Desolate. That is not a modest word. It means emptied, deserted, left.

And he says it directly and without arranging it to sound better first. He does not say I am finding this a little difficult. He names the condition and then asks God to turn toward it.

You are permitted to name a thing at its actual size, and Psalm 25 has never once required a person to shrink it before speaking. Psalm 25:16 has a man say I am desolate and afflicted straight out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that permission real for a woman who has been managing her words for six years.

Notice also what he asks for. Turn thee unto me. He is not asking for the situation to change. He is asking to be looked at.

You have been asking for six years to be seen without ever saying so, and the word has never once made that a shameful request. The passage puts a plain description of the condition in front of God, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns toward a person who says it plainly.

What the not telling has cost

Let me put a number on this, because I think it has been carried without ever being weighed.

Secrecy makes a thing heavier. Not metaphorically. A trouble that exists in one head has no edges and no size, because there is nothing outside it to measure it against. Say it out loud to one person and it acquires a shape, and a shape is survivable in a way that a fog is not.

It also removes help. Not the fixing kind, which you do not want and would refuse. The other kind. Somebody noticing you look tired in March and asking. Somebody remembering, in October, what you said in March.

And there is a third cost that is harder to say. Six years of true sentences that were not the whole sentence has put a distance between you and four women who love you, and you are lonelier with them now than you were before you started.

You are lonelier for the protecting, and the protecting has never once been able to reduce the weight it was hiding. Psalm 25:16 has the man describe himself accurately in the hearing of God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a fog and gives it edges.

You were keeping a promise and keeping a secret at the same time, and only one of those has ever once been required of anybody. It is written that a man asked God to turn toward him and called himself desolate, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes plain speech possible where managed speech has become a habit.

Tell one person, and only one

Here is the assignment and it is narrower than it sounds, which is what makes it possible.

Tell one person the truth about how alone this has been.

One. Not four. Not the group. One person, chosen for one quality: that she can hear a thing without immediately telling you what to do about it.

You are choosing for the one thing that matters rather than for the closest friendship, and Psalm 25 has never once required a crowd. Psalm 25:16 has one man name his own condition plainly and ask to be turned toward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the four seconds after a first sentence.

And tell her one sentence. Not the six years. Something like: I am on my own in my marriage and I have not told anybody that until now.

That is enough. You do not owe her the whole account and she does not need it.

You are able to say one true sentence to one safe person, and the truth has never once required the full six years to be handed over with it. Psalm 25:16 puts the naming of a condition into words with nothing arranged, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the four seconds after somebody says a thing out loud for the first time.

If nobody comes to mind, that is real information and not a failure. A pastor, a counselor, a doctor. Somebody qualified counts and often counts more.