Elisabeth decided to come up to my work, and I had the letters (at least her letter) with me. After I thought she had left, I texted her to say that I had something for her when I was done at work. I was going to drop the letters off with her and go straight to my nursing test just to put answers. Then I was going to leave town. But little did I know Elisabeth was still in the parking lot. She immediately came back in, and I felt this prompt from within me to hand her her letter at that moment. So I did. She cried. She asked me what this meant, and I said I didn’t know. She suggested I tell one of my nursing professors. So I did. They told me to come to the test but not worry about taking it.
I debated not showing up to the test at all, but Elisabeth made me promise to go. When I showed up, the dean of nursing was there to talk to me. She talked to me. I promised the dean of nursing I wouldn’t do anything that night, and Elisabeth picked me up. Elisabeth actually let me drive my car back to the apartments, but she followed me there. We cried (a lot), she prayed. Her mom (she was only 18 I believe) came for her moral support as her best friend had almost possibly committed suicide.
I told John about it too, as he was now my fiancé, and I wanted emotional support (and didn’t want to tell my parents yet). I told him not to tell my parents, but not even 15 minutes after he came by the apartments, my parents were calling, asking me questions like “how could you even think like that?” My mom basically demanded that I spend the night at their house the next night. That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to say no.
The next day, I had an all day clinical that was an hour away. By the time I got home and packed to spend the night at my parents’ house, I was exhausted. I went to their house anyway, and not to my surprise, I got bombarded with the same questions. “How could you…?” “What would make you even think like that?” “Did you pray about it?” I left their house the next morning feeling worse than I had before. I came back to the apartments, and I’m honestly not sure if I slept, cried, or went for a walk just to be alone.
Later, I talked extensively with John. He promised not to breach my privacy like that again, and I promised to tell our counselor/pastor what was going on. At that time, we had just started going to pre-marital counseling, as we had both agreed that it would be a smart decision. So we told the pastor who was counseling us what had happened. At the same meeting, the pastor heard about my daymares and nightmares. He suggested we push back the wedding date.
After talking some more with John, I agreed to go to individual counseling, and we decided to move the wedding from January to June of 2021. I had never been to a counselor (except one time previously, which was a terrible experience). I had never been other than that once because I felt like there was a stigma toward people who went to counseling. I felt weak for needing a counselor, like I didn’t trust God enough. That one experience was also enough to make me not want to go to counseling again. But, I told John I would go.
Around the same time I had written those letters, Elisabeth and I had a conversation (I don’t remember who started the conversation) about some stuff we had been doing. Elisabeth and I had experimented with pressure points and with hypnotism from the time I was junior high or early high school age. Apparently, I was extremely sensitive to pressure points, and could be hypnotized by her, but only after being hit on multiple pressure points. We pressed pressure points on each other when we got bored and didn’t know what else to do. When she moved away, we would still do these things when we visited each other.
When we moved in together, we did this a lot more often. One day, I asked her to deprive me of oxygen to see how long I could go before becoming delirious. To my surprise, she did. It felt really good physically to have all the pressure points hit, to be deprived of oxygen. It felt good for my mind to finally stop screaming all sorts of things at me, for it to be quiet. But something inside of me was screaming, “This is wrong!” We continued doing these things (including the oxygen deprivation) for a few months after we started living in the apartments. Finally, we had a conversation about it, and we both agreed that what we had been doing was wrong. So we stopped.
It felt like stopping an addiction at first (I mean that’s basically what it was, at least for me). Then we had to re-figure out how to hang out, what to do with our time when we got bored. We had to re-structure our friendship so that it revolved around God and being healthy, not whatever that stuff was. This took longer than our time living together, but I’m so glad that we realized what we were doing was wrong and did something about it. When we started experimenting, we thought it was just something to do for entertainment. But as we continued, both of us felt what we now recognize as Holy Spirit telling us that what we were doing was wrong.
I was too ashamed of all of this stuff with Elisabeth to tell my counselor, Geraldine, about it. Geraldine was very kind. But I thought it weird that she asked if I had been sexually abused. I told her I didn’t think so. Why did I say I didn’t think so? That was a yes or no question. There was this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I had been sexually abused. But I didn’t remember any instances. So, Geraldine and I moved on and decided to work through some relationship stuff with my mom. We worked on getting ready for marriage, as I was definitely not ready. We talked about my legs sometimes becoming paralyzed, and how to emotionally deal with that. But we didn’t talk about my shame around having immoral relations with my best friend.
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