Our vacation came to an abrupt end on Monday. We are back home, sweltering with the rest of you.
As some of you know, I have gastroparesis—an incurable stomach disease (constant nausea, frequent bouts of vomiting, severe bowel problems). I also have fibromyalgia and live with unrelenting pain in my spine and neck from arthritis, degenerative disease, and numerous herniated discs. I knew taking a trip anywhere was going to be a challenge, but I took the “fuck it, you only live once” approach. Polly doubted I was up to the trip, but she knows not to push back when I’m hellbent on doing what I want. Little did she know how bad it would be.
While it was pain and nausea that brought me home, I must confess I had, for a variety reasons, a mental meltdown.
I have OCPD (obsessive compulsive personality disorder). I like and need order. I’ve always been this way. Living with me can be a challenge, but Polly and I have found a way to make peace with each other’s shortcomings and phobias. We will soon be married for forty-four years, so I guess we’ve figured a few things out. 😂❤️
In our forty-four years of marriage, we have stayed in the homes of people not family five times. That’s it. I have a hard time staying or sleeping in any home but my own. We rented a VRBO property for our vacation. I thought, “Bruce, you can do this.” Boy, was I wrong. The place was not clean. I got a total of three hours sleep over two days. The house had a chemical smell from the improper cleaning of the floors. The floors had a film on them, so much so that walking on them left footprints. These things, among others, pushed me over the edge mentally (and I’ve been on the edge for awhile).
One of the reasons we vacationed in southeast Ohio was so we could retrace the sixteen years we lived there in the 80s and 90s. I pastored two churches, one in Buckeye Lake, another in Somerset. I grossly underestimated how doing so would psychologically affect me. I couldn’t help but think about the sacrifices I made serving a lie; how my commitment to the ministry harmed Polly and our children; how I sacrificed our economic well-being, believing God would provide; how I worked myself to death in God’s vineyard, causing me physical and emotional harm; how Polly never had an opportunity to be anyone other than the Preacher’s wife; how my children became extensions of my work and ambition.
If this is TMI for you, I understand. I’m human, and right now I’m broken. I’m grateful that I scheduled a therapy session before I left. I need it — badly. Don’t let anyone tell you certain expressions of religious faith can’t cause harm. They can, and for me anyway, I will spend my remaining days trying to come to terms with my Fundamentalist past and the harm it caused, hoping to somehow make an uneasy peace with the past.
