What follows are stories about how I got caged—and how I got free.
I am ten years old, and I’m sitting in a small room in the back of Nativity Catholic Church with twenty other kids. I am at CCD, where my parents send me on Wednesday nights to learn about God. Our CCD teacher is my classmate’s mom. I do not remember her name, but I do remember that she keeps telling us that she is an accountant during the day. Her family needed service hours, so she volunteered to work in the gift shop. Instead, the church assigned her to room 423, fifth-grade CCD. So now—on Wednesdays between 6:30 and 7:30 P.M.—she teaches children about God.
She asks us to sit on the carpet in front of her chair, because she is going to explain to us how God made people. I hurry to get a spot in front. I am very curious about how and why I was made. I notice that our teacher does not have a Bible or any other books in her lap. She is going to speak from memory. I am impressed.
She begins.
“God made Adam and put him in a beautiful garden. Adam was God’s favorite creation, so He told Adam that his only jobs were to be happy, rule over the garden, and name the animals. Adam’s life was almost perfect. Except that he got lonely and stressed. He wanted some company and help naming the animals. So he told God that he wanted a companion and a helper. One night, God helped Adam give birth to Eve. From inside Adam’s body, a woman was born. That is why she is called woman. Because women came from the womb of man. Womb—man.”
I am so amazed that I forget to raise my hand.
“Wait. Adam gave birth to Eve? But don’t people come from women’s bodies? Shouldn’t boys be called woman? Shouldn’t all people be called woman?”
My teacher says, “Raise your hand, Glennon.”
I raise my hand. She motions for me to put it back down. The boy sitting to my left rolls his eyes at me.
Our teacher goes on.
“Adam and Eve were happy, and everything stayed perfect for a while.
“But then God said there was one tree they couldn’t eat from: the Tree of Knowledge. Even though it was the only thing that Eve wasn’t allowed to want, she wanted an apple from that tree anyway. So one day, she got hungry, picked the apple off the tree, and took a bite. Then she tricked Adam into taking a bite, too. As soon as Adam bit into the apple, Eve and Adam felt shame for the first time and tried to hide from God. But God sees everything, so God knew. God banished Adam and Eve from the garden. Then He cursed them and their future children, and for the first time, suffering existed on the earth. This is why we still suffer today, because Eve’s original sin is inside of all of us. That sin is wanting to know more than we are supposed to know, wanting more instead of being grateful for what we have, and doing what we want to do instead of what we should do.”
That was some careful accounting. I had no further questions.
My husband and I began working with a therapist after he admitted that he had been sleeping with other women. Now we save up our problems throughout the week and take them to her on Tuesday evenings. When friends ask me if she’s any good, I say, “I guess so. I mean, we’re still married.”
Today I’ve asked to see her alone. I’m tired and jittery because I spent all night silently rehearsing how to tell her what I’m about to tell her.
I sit quietly in my chair, hands folded in my lap. She sits upright in the chair across from me. She wears a crisp white pantsuit, sensible heels, no makeup. A wooden bookshelf crowded with textbooks and framed degrees climbs the wall behind her like a bean stalk. Her pen is poised above a leather notebook in her lap, ready to pin me down in black and white. I remind myself: Speak calmly and confidently, Glennon, like a grown-up.
“I have something important to tell you. I’ve fallen in love. I am wildly in love. Her name is Abby.”
My therapist’s mouth falls open, just enough for me to notice it. She says nothing for an eternal moment. Then she breathes very deeply and says, “Okay.”
She pauses, starts again. “Glennon, you know that whatever this is—it’s not real. These feelings are not real. Whatever future you’re imagining here: That’s not real, either. This is nothing but a dangerous distraction. It won’t end well. It has to stop.”
I start to say, “You don’t understand. This is different.” But then I think about all the people who have sat in this chair and insisted: This is different.
If she won’t let me have Abby, I need to make my case, at least, for never again having my husband.
“I cannot sleep with him again,” I say. “You know how hard I’ve tried. Sometimes I think I’ve forgiven. But then he climbs on top of me, and I hate him again. It’s been years and I don’t want to be difficult, so I close my eyes and try to float away until it’s over. But then I accidentally land back inside my body, and what I land in is white-hot fiery rage. It’s like: I try to go dead inside but there is always a little life left in me, and that life makes sex unbearable. I can’t be alive during sex, but I can’t get dead enough, either, so there’s no solution. I just—I don’t want to do it anymore.”
I am furious that tears come, but they do. I am begging now. Mercy, please.
Two women. One white suit. Six framed degrees. One open notebook. One pen, poised.
Then: “Glennon, have you tried just giving him blow jobs instead? Many women find blow jobs to be less intimate.”
I have a son and two daughters, until they tell me otherwise.
My children believe that the shower is a magical portal of ideas.
My youngest recently said to me, “Mom, it’s like I don’t have any ideas all day, but when I get in the shower my brain is full of cool stuff. I think it’s the water or something.”
“Could be the water,” I said. “Or it could be that the shower’s the only place you’re not plugged in—so you can hear your own thoughts in there.”
She looked at me and said, “Huh?”
“That thing that happens to you in the shower, babe. It’s called thinking. It’s something folks did before Google. Thinking is like…it’s like googling your own brain.”
“Oh,” she said. “Cool.”
That same child steals my expensive shampoo once a week, so the other day I stomped to the bathroom she shares with her teenage brother and sister to steal it back. I opened the shower curtain and noticed the twelve empty bottles littering the tub’s edge. All the bottles on the right side were red, white, and blue. All the bottles on the left side were pink and purple.