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“I know,” she said. “I don’t want you to focus on that, though. It was painful because my body would lock down and not because of anything you were doing wrong. Okay? But at the time, I thought there might be something physically wrong with me, so I went to my gynecologist because that’s what women do when they think there’s something wrong with their vaginas.”
“Jesus,” he sort of groaned, the clinical phrasing making him squirm a little.
“What?”
“Can you not use that word?”
“Gynecologist?”
“The other one.”
“Oh, vagina?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Why? What’s wrong with the word ‘vagina’?”
“Just quit saying it, please.”
She feigned ignorance. “Seriously, why? I’m not understanding.”
“I just don’t want to hear it.”
“You don’t want me to say the word ‘vagina’ so you don’t have to hear it?”
“Good, you’re finally getting it.”
“What I’m getting is that you’re really squeamish about the word ‘vagina’ which is a little immature, don’t you think?”
David raised his eyes to the ceiling and begged, “Please, God, make it stop.”
“Fine. ‘Vagina’ is off the table. I won’t say ‘vagina’ anymore,” she promised, hiding a smile before commencing with her story. “So, anyway, after examining me, my gynecologist determined that there was nothing wrong with my you-know-what and I was actually disappointed. I know this is going to sound insane, but I’d been hoping that there was something medically wrong with my you-know-what, something minor that could be treated and fixed. But there wasn’t. I was told that my you-know-what was in good working condition and there was nothing wrong with it.”
“Christ,” he muttered and she knew it was in response to all the ‘you-know-what’s’ she’d thrown out there.
“I was also told that some women simply just ‘don’t like sex’ and that I was likely ‘one of them’. Now, he might’ve really believed that and thought he was being helpful by giving me a ‘reason’ for my problem. However, what he said was actually the opposite of helpful and it wasn’t long before I was thinking he might actually be right when sex didn’t get any better. Being one of those women who just ‘don’t like sex’ seemed like the most logical explanation as to why I didn’t like it and I accepted that as my ‘normal’ setting and quit thinking about any other possible reasons for not liking it.
“When I found out what was really ‘wrong’ with me, I thought I should’ve figured it out sooner. Even after I knew our marriage ending was the catalyst for my recovery, it still didn’t stop me from illogically continuing to think I should’ve been able to figure it out before the shit hit the fan for us.
“It wasn’t until my therapist, Lauren, said the pieces fell into place when I was ready for them to, that I was able to let go of my guilt. She told me that some people, depending on the level of their abuse, are never ready and never get to really heal. So, the fact that it happened for me, is a gift. Granted, it’s a gift that only came with the loss of our marriage, but if it hadn’t happened, I couldn’t have healed and reclaimed myself.
“So, if I can let go of my guilt for not figuring it out sooner and needing the catalyst to recover, then you should be able to let go of yours for providing the catalyst that I needed to recover,” she told him. “You gave me the push I needed.”
Push? David shook his head a little, thinking it had been more like a shove out of an airplane without a parachute, into an erupting volcano. For a second, the visual of Paige free falling through the sky while yelling, “Thank you!” and him waving and shouting back, “You’re welcome!” distracted him, so that he almost missed what she said next.
“You and I were in an unsustainable relationship and your decision to end it was a good one. I know you thought you were weak to leave me, but you weren’t. You were strong. You saved me, David. You did,” she insisted, when he started to protest. “I actually wanted to tell you that a few years ago, but Ashley got in the way of that.”
David thought about what Paige had been going through, then getting sucker-punched by that bullshit email from Ashley.
“I really wish that hadn’t happened,” he said.
“Me, too. Especially since it happened shortly after I told my mom … which didn’t go very well. I didn’t sleep at all the night before because all I could think about was the heartbreak I was going to deliver. I was really worried about how she was going to react to the double blow of learning that I’d been sexually abused and that my abuser was Carter.”
Claire had never been David’s biggest fan, which, in turn, hadn’t made him hers; but at that moment, he felt nothing but overwhelming compassion for his former mother-in-law. Remembering that Valerie had said this scene in the book broke her heart, he imagined it had done the same to Claire. “She must have been devastated.”
“Actually, she wasn’t,” Paige said, matter-of-factly. “Because she didn’t believe me.”
His eyes widened in dismay. “She didn’t?”
