incongruent

Incongruent, Oil on canvas 2012-2023

I started this painting in 2012, and finished it March 2023. For two straight weeks I painted and wept, painted and wept. The tears burst out of me as I lay color down. Tears unexplainable and sometimes so violent I would have to sit on the floor in front of my easel and keen. The painting is of my son, seven years old, sitting on a stool right in the middle of the canvas. His face is painted with clown makeup. The weight of his body is burdened by his slight lean forward on his arms that reach down to the seat of the stool between his legs. His shoulders raised to meet his big drooped head. 

It’s the best thing i’ve ever painted. Spot on, my kid. 

Max used to ask me to paint his face almost everyday around that age. He would bring me drawings of his own designs or describe his ideas to me. It was my honor and joy to realize his imagined face for the day. On this particular day he had simply asked to paint him as a clown. Easy. I looked at some quick references and began with the white all over, added black triangles above and below his eyes, red dots on his cheeks and nose, and a big red smile. I finished and straightened my back to get a look at him. “Stay right there, don’t get down yet” I said and snapped a few photos. I knew it would be a painting. He jumped down from the stool and went about his planned play. 

We were not ok. Max actually despised me at the time. His father (K) and I had been divorced for 3 or 4 years by then, but he had recently found out that I had had an affair. K then told my son that this was why we were no longer together.  Did I have sexual intercourse with another man while I was married? Yes. Actually there were 2 men and a woman, plus the others I fell in love with or had crushes and flirted with aggressively. 

I was taught by my parents, every other adult, church meeting, youth pastor, and friends, to remain a “virgin” until marriage and only ever be with one man. Till I die. At age 13 I met my ex-husband. He was 16 at the time and I had never received attention like that. It felt good to be with him even though most of the christianity stuff was maddening. Our phone conversations were one sided. I would listen to him tell me about the bible and all his sense-making of bullshit for hours at a time. During these calls I barely spoke. I lacked the material knowledge to debate, and had been taught to deny my own intuition. 

K was one of the many young men who felt they needed to “do something” after 9/11. I do not vilify this feeling, but it's the “something” where our paths diverge. He joined the National Guard before we were engaged. During basic and MOS training the distance and limited phone calls had me aching for him. We had done pretty much every sex act except vaginal intercourse. He had convinced me that anal sex was somehow not sex. Since I was 14 he would finger me at any chance. In church, in the car, many times while I was sitting next to a family member or in a crowded living room church meeting- my face red-hot and unable to leave, or say no, or scream yes. I split. I masked to keep it going, to cum. When gas and breaks are being pushed at the same time i.e. getting fingered while sitting next to your dad, it changes you. Fucks you up. I developed a skill of self betrayal and I was really good at it. 

We were married just 3 months after my 20th birthday. The wedding night was soso at best, an alarming bummer. What had I done? The honeymoon was fun, in retrospect because I was fun. I can make the best of any rink-a-dink vacation.

K wanted me to stop taking the birth control which I hadn't been taking that long because before then, it was all anal. We argued back and forth over it. He took me to see some woman who had written her entire thesis on the evils of birth control with biblical “proof”.  They sat me down and gave me a lecture. I eventually yielded because that’s what godly women do. I did want children, I wanted 3 or 4 actually I just wanted a little time to myself first.

He had convinced me that even though his friends were getting sent to Iraq that he wouldn’t be sent. Which is interesting considering he joined to fight back at something. I got pregnant in the fall of 2004. And guess who calls? God himself. “God told me to go to Iraq” he says sitting on the edge of our bed. He left me and was gone pretty much my entire pregnancy. I leaned into martyrdom. I collected as much pity as possible at our church but the novelty quickly turned sour and I quit going altogether. My soul returned to me slowly as I distanced myself.

Anyone who knows me now would say it’s hard to believe who I used to be. I am anti war, anti marriage, tax the church, eat the rich, anarchist kind of gal. My body count is uncounted. But back then I had really believed that I would never love another, or so much as long for another. I remember the first time I developed a crush while married. It scared me. But it passed and then I had another which also passed. I thought well this must be how it’s going to be. They will come and go.

My ex-husband understandably struggled during his mobilization. He would call me, miserable and desperate saying he was going to shoot his foot off to get out, or drink a bunch of nyquil. He was diagnosed by the military with BPD and given an honorable discharge in May of 2005.

He never went to Iraq.

I was due on July 8th. While he was gone I developed a fierce protective attitude against my in-laws, I didn’t want them near my baby. The escape fantisies ranged from suicide to driving to california and changing my identity. My pregnancy saved my life while also giving me reason to end it. On July 20th my son was born. 

After I healed from an emergency cesarean, I was eager to try sex with K again. He wouldn’t. No matter the tactic. I counted menstrual cycles between sexual encounters. I had co-workers giving me ideas and checking in periodically to see if I’d gotten laid. Nope. Still ignored. I started self harming, it didn’t make him take me more seriously. I can’t even recall if he noticed the cuts on my hips and thighs. But if he fed me enough beers he would fuck me in the ass, that, he noticed. 

Ten years later I would learn the term ‘marital rape’ which would be another shatter point of belief. The church had repeatedly said “the marriage bed is undefiled” anything goes and everything is on the man's terms. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy parts of it, but under starvation you’ll eat anything.

The second person I ever fucked was sent by the gods. Hopefully he never reads that ego inflating sentence. I was given eyes to see and a body to feel how extremely connected, hungry and satisfied sex could be. Indoctrination breaking. It felt like the trigger being pulled on a life long threat, but there were no bullets, it was never a real gun to begin with. The fear and the excitement of a near death, that never was. Neural pathways flooded and reconnected somewhere else. A shifting paradigm is the dragon I chase. 

We got a divorce. He wanted more children and I didn’t want to have anymore with him. It was a deal breaker. He still had no idea I had “cheated”. Years go by, my finances got better than ever, my son and I live in a duplex in a sweet Decatur neighborhood where kids roam free and play. We were all right. 

Monday was the day that my son came home from being with his dad. Mondays were an unloading of emotion and literal physical back up. My son wouldn’t poop when he was at his dad’s. The fights and breakdowns on Mondays were epic and I learned to expect the rage. Noticing this pattern finally gave way to the revelation that my son’s father had told him the reason we were not together was that I had been unfaithful. Instead of talking to me, K leaned on Max emotionally and pawned him as a tool of revenge. His little 7-year-old body and mind had no business knowing this. He had no life experience or tools to understand relationship nuance, or how society's ideals are not a standard of ideals. He was inconsolable, so furious that I thought I had lost my relationship with him forever. It lasted years. Years of mondays, shit releasing, screaming, confusion and questions “I’m sorry you know this, it’s none of your business. I can take your anger, be angry at me”. 

When Adelle released the track ‘hello’ in 2015 we were still struggling. To me that song was about me and my son and it always will be. I don't care if you think it’s cheesy. I’d weep and attempt to sing every time it played in my car. She was speaking directly to how shut out I was, and how forever it felt.

The day I painted his face like a clown I saw the mask he was growing into. I didn’t have that word yet but I knew he was splitting and emotionally taking care of his dad. He was keeping the adult emotions together that his father didn’t know how to hold.  He was losing the freedom that childhood ignorance affords. I had birthed him under the same conditions of lost agency. When I took the reference photos for this painting I knew the potential with a kind of fear. Maybe that’s why it took so long to finish. My son would joke “Mom! i’m going to be 30 by the time you finish that thing”. I was a wreck of emotions painting through blurred vision and heaves of grief. The time really bothered me. I was embarrassed by it, My son is a young adult now in 2026 as I write this. We are close, somewhere around 12 years old things shifted and softened. 

This is my grief work.