The Story Behind "I Looked Away"
I must have asked myself a thousand times: how did I get here, what was I thinking, how did I create this mess? explored these three critical questions for months. No matter how good an answer seemed to be, I dug deeper. I wanted to understand more. My motivation was simple: I was determined never, never, never to repeat this life lesson. I promised myself that if I should ever attempt to have a relationship again, I would not, not, not choose someone like my ex-husband, and the only way to be sure of that was to not, not, not be the person I was when I chose to marry him. So I needed to understand that person. Even if I didn’t like her. Even if I was ashamed of her. I needed to know her, so I could stop being her.
I was still asking myself these questions two years after the divorce journey began. In my journal one August day, I wrote about how the whole thing started:
Dear God, it has been two years since I saw my husband writing an e-mail to his secretary, “I want to find a place where we can…” Instantly I knew, saw what I had been unwilling to see, what was there, what had been there for years, perhaps always. I knew completely and fully that he was sleeping with his secretary. All the hints lined up like dancers leaping onto the stage in a straight line: he calls her name in his sleep, he doesn’t come home till 9, he works every Saturday, he’s always on the computer, he doesn’t want as much sex, he drinks alone at night, he takes prescription drugs, he never kisses me, he never hugs me, he never says I love you, he’s sleeping on the sofa. Boom. Boom. Boom. The facts lined up behind one another. How did I not see this, God? Why did I not see this? It was there. Why did I not see what was there? What else was I not seeing? What happened to me, God? Why did I look away?
There was the phrase I was searching for: “look away.” It registered in my hands and my heart. Yup. Look away. That’s the “sin” I committed. I looked away. This wasn’t just about what he did; this was about what I did and what I did was look away. Here was something I could change, something I could heal. The new Janet would not look away; she would look and she would see. But first, the old Janet needed to acknowledge all the times she looked away.
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