Rip Off the Band-Aid: It’s Time to Reveal the Healing

My exuberant smile dropped from my face.

On my birthday this year, as I celebrated my 31st birthday and my Dad’s retirement with family, I received another smile-crushing message.  That time I had to guess which of my exes it was that was ruining my celebrations.  It was one and the same guy who had quite effectively withdrew the wind from my sails this time around.

I didn’t want to appear like a you-know-what, so I texted a simple, “Hi, how are you?” in response.  I wasn’t about to carry on a full-fledged conversation, but I also did not want to act as though I couldn’t manage to be civil.  And then I didn’t hear anything back and so I breathed a sigh of relief.

But I guess I breathed a little too soon, because two days later, and only ten minutes before I was supposed to leave for Zumba, my phone buzzed again.

I decided I’d try to get through a quick and civil conversation and be on my way to Zumba, but it just wasn’t in the cards.  After responding to see what he had found, I learned that it was some pictures from a trip that he and I had taken where we ran into Joe Manchin, who at the time was governor.  I commented that that was a long time ago.

And then he joked saying, “lol found something else…” To which I, unfortunately, asked, “Such as?”  Little did I know, the game had already started.

“Trust me…don’t ask lol” was his response.  And the light bulb clicked on in my head and rage, that I haven’t experienced in a long time bubbled to the surface.

“Then why tell?”  I texted back, as I was fighting against the adrenaline now pumping through my veins.

I changed my clothes, knowing that I was going to be late for Zumba, and sat down on my bed.  A message buzzed with a simple, “idk…sorry”.  Despite his attempt at apologizing, I knew he wasn’t sincere.  And he surely hadn’t changed since our last encounters at the end of our relationship and the messy aftermath.  If he had, he wouldn’t have texted in the first place.

The rage bubbled over.  I had had enough.  I spent years trying to make a relationship work with him, despite his alcoholism and his messy past that had an odd tendency of surfacing.  I spent a year or more getting over him after the crushing blow of being cheated on (with the woman that is now his wife) while I had moved home to help take care of my mom after her open-heart surgery.

I looked around my bedroom, taking in the life that I had created since our breakup.  The rage subsided.  My life was so vastly different from when I was desperately trying to make things work between he and I.  It was like I had ripped off a Band-Aid; to reveal the healing that had taken place underneath.

I realized how much stronger and self-sufficient I had become in the eight years since that temporary devastation.  Yet I prayed to God to provide me the words that I needed to make him understand this change and that what he was trying to do wasn’t acceptable.  The words that came from my thumbs, as I texted a response were straight from my heart, but not words that I expected.

I told him that I was just trying to figure out the point of the conversation and that if he wanted to be friends, that was fine and something I could handle, but I wasn’t up for games.  I reminded him that he is married and has a child, and let him know that my life is completely different than when he last knew me.

My final text to him asked that he dispose of anything that he found that was “questionable” in nature, and not to do it for my benefit, but that of his daughter.  In response, I received silence.

I did make it to Zumba… just in time to punch out some of my frustration.

Looking back over the last eight years, I now realize that God has ripped off the Band-Aids of those old wounds one by one and breathed new life into me.