Over. Over. At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, out of a dead sleep, I hear five whispered words not meant for me: "I just can't quit you." My husband of twenty-six years is voice-texting his girlfriend next to me in our bed. It is the end of my life as I know it. The next four hours are chaos. While he eventually passes out from a treacherous combination of booze and exposure, I follow a trail of betrayal on his computer, an entire other life. My body is frozen. I can't even cry. My whole world is slipping away click by click. I float above myself watching my brain absorb the impossible, watching my heart splinter. So this is what it looks like when a life unravels in real time. It is quieter than I expected. The kids are upstairs asleep, unaware that their story has just split in half. They went to bed in the hazy, lazy days of summer polluted by a four-month-old COVID outbreak but otherwise sleeping the comfortable sleep of kids whose parents will always be just downstairs; family disruption might come from outside but never from within. Not ours anyway. I keep thinking: "They don't know. I don't want to know. I want to go upstairs with them and not know." At 6:30 a.m., having endured as much discovery as a soul can take in four middle-of-the-night hours, I wake him up and ask for the full truth and nothing less. He is unwilling. I tell him to pack his shit and get out. It is the last night he ever spends at our house. I text my parents and sisters and brother: I need you at Mom's house right now. No one asks for an explanation. This type of summons signals a crisis, and everyone is there by 7:00 a.m. I pull into their driveway, and Mom is waiting outside. She has no idea what has happened, but she opens her arms with tears streaming and I finally collapse. I scream like a wounded animal. I can't stop. I've lost all sense of time and space. I feel my siblings throw their arms around me, but I am gone. Excerpted from Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
