Sleeping With a Stranger

By Jessica Zimmerman

What happens when the strong, ambitious man you married fades into a stranger with an illness no
doctor can diagnose?

When Jessica Zimmerman’s husband Brian contracted a mysterious illness that left him 60 pounds
underweight and a prisoner to their master bathroom, she had no idea the journey of self-discovery

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clay Zimmerman, Inc
• Release date: Mar 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951407193

Book preview

SLEEPING WITH A STRANGER

Jessica Zimmerman

Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Zimmerman.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

This work is non-fiction and, as such, reflects the author’s memory of the experiences. Many of the names and identifying characteristics of the individuals featured in this book have been changed to protect their privacy and certain individuals are composites. Dialogue and events have been recreated; in some cases, conversations were edited to convey their substance rather than written exactly as they occurred.

Book design by Kathryn Joachim

Cover image by Jason Masters

Manuscript editing by Rachel Fletcher

Developmental editing by Kristen McGuinness

Copy editing by Ryan Aliapoulios

ISBN-13: 978-1-951407-20-9 Hardback

ISBN-13: 978-1-951407-18-6 Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-951407-19-3 eBook

To Mom and Dad,

The strongest people I know.

Also, if you could ignore the f-bombs and skip over the sex scenes, that’d be great.

INTRODUCTION

As I walked through the aisle of my neighborhood Kroger, I looked in my shopping cart at a pack of pink-striped Disney Pull-Ups for my potty-training toddler. Next to those colorful Disney characters sat a colossal box of size three Pampers, sporting assorted zoo animals, for my eight-month-old twin boys. For a normal family, the enormous diaper box would last until the end times. For us? Maybe a week.

Stuffed next to those giant boxes was a pack of Depends for adult men. From a business standpoint, the branding was impressive: a hunter green background with a muscled man standing with his arms crossed. It was impossible to tell the man’s age because half his head was out of the frame. The buff model’s smile clearly communicated that he was sure of his anonymity, and furthermore, that his urinary or rectal deficiencies had in no way diminished his positive outlook on life. The framing made sense—after all, what man would want to show his face while flaunting adult diapers?

The model bore no resemblance to the man for whom I was buying the diapers—the one sick at home, wearing a path in the carpet between our marriage bed and the bathroom. That man had quickly become the oldest 33-year-old I’d ever seen. His skin was sallow and sunken, and every day he turned grayer. His life was a light with a dimmer switch, slowly being turned down.

Brian had never been huge, but as the 5’11, 180-pound man I married, he had a powerful physical presence that made my 5’3 frame feel safe and enclosed. Initially, that was my ideal marriage dynamic. A strong husband who provided and protected. A man like my father. Kind, capable and just as comfortable wrangling cattle as he was commanding a board room. I didn’t want a 1950’s Ward and June Cleaver situation. Brian and I were best friends, and we had a real partnership. It’s just that if I was being really honest with myself, I’d always expected Brian to take care of me. He was supposed to be the one to make the pay the mortgage money. He would be stable, and I would be fun.

Growing up in the South, that’s just what men did. What I didn’t realize then was that all of us—all the men and women I knew—had been given a script on how to live our lives. This is how you behave. This is what you think. This is what’s expected of you.

Of course, we didn’t know we were all reading from this script; we just went along with the roles we were assigned. And Brian and I were no different. From the minute we met in college, we had been playing our respective roles. And it worked, for a while.

But now my husband weighed only 130 pounds and stooped as he shuffled his way to and from the bathroom. He hadn’t really been to work in weeks. How could he, when he could barely leave the toilet? His control over his bowels had left the building, taking his dignity with it.

My life could not get any shittier, I thought. But as I was beginning to learn, when life goes off-script, it also gives you an incredible opportunity.

Over the course of my husband’s illness, I began to build the career I always wanted and the life I always dreamed about. But would saying yes to who I really was mean saying no to my marriage?

My husband and I went from a perfectly happy couple with one toddler and two babies to separate emotional places I could have never imagined. But as I later realized, it was up to us whether we wanted to keep reading our lines or begin to write our own script for how we were always meant to live.

But before we could choose, we needed to go through a lot of shit to get there.

Chapter One

When I look back now at a photo taken when I was only three years old, my family resembled any other loving, suburban family in the South. My mother must have had an entire bottle of hairspray in her hair, and my father’s smile was filled with pride. He was there with his beautiful wife and lovely daughters—me and my eight-year-old sister Courtney.

Most of my early memories are centered on Courtney. She was five years older than me, and I worshipped her. Somehow, she adored me right back and included me in everything. I have to imagine that after five years with just Courtney around, my parents thought this parenting thing was going to be easy. And then they had me—wild, funny, independent Jess.

I was three years old when Courtney died, but memories of the last minutes we had with her haven’t diminished with time or age.

We were leaving our house to visit my grand-parents, just like we did most Saturday afternoons. My mom was staying behind and likely getting a rare break from motherhood; my dad worked full-time and she stayed at home, like most moms we knew. I remember Courtney holding up her Raggedy Ann doll to my mom, which was nearly as big as I was. Courtney pulled aside the doll’s sleeve to reveal the red heart she’d stitched there. She called to my mom and pointed to the heart, smiling.

I love you.

Then, we climbed into my dad’s old pickup and drove the 45 minutes to my grandparents’ house. As my dad made the left turn onto their road, a car barreled toward us. The hood of the oncoming car crashed through the car door that separated Courtney from the hot summer day. She was taken to the hospital by helicopter, but there was nothing the doctors could do.

I don’t remember specifics about the rest of that night. The only thing that mattered—echoing dully through my heart and mind—was that Courtney was gone.

Part of me thinks we could have been anywhere in the world that night and it would have been Courtney’s time to go.

To my mother’s credit, she never blamed my dad for the accident.

Right after it happened, she told me later, your father called me and said y’all had been in an accident and that Courtney was being helicoptered to the hospital and for me to meet him there. I hung up the phone and I knew I’d never speak to her again. I just knew it in my heart. I got in my car and drove the 30 minutes to the hospital, and as I was driving, I made a decision.

What? I asked her, though so many years and memories separated us from that night.

I knew that it could have just as easily been me driving. I knew how much your dad loved you girls. You and Courtney were his whole world. I knew he would beat himself up for the rest of his life. I knew he would never be reckless with you girls, ever. And I made a decision on the drive to the hospital that I would never ever blame him.

Because I had a black eye from the accident, I wore sunglasses to the funeral, but in so many ways, I felt like no one could see my pain. People would come up and ask my parents how they were doing, but nobody knelt down to me and asked me the same. It seemed like people didn’t think I could grieve Courtney because I was only three and grief was an intense, adult emotion. But my loss felt big and real and absolutely unrecognized.

Instead, I just quietly unlearned how to live life with a best friend by my side. Even at the age of three, I began to ask myself: What does life look like now?

Everything I knew about myself and the world around me was filtered through Courtney, and she was gone. My parents wore their grief like a favorite blanket.

As I grew up, new friends assumed I was an only child. Only I wasn’t. I was the second-born, the baby, and more than anything, I wanted my sister back. And if I couldn’t have Courtney with me, then I wanted someone to understand how deeply I wished she were.

When my first child Stella was born, I pulled out my phone just hours after and figured out the exact date she would be the same age that I was when Courtney died. I wanted to know what that age felt like, how she would be interpreting and experiencing the world at that time. And I wanted to make sure I honored her in it.

In so many ways, Courtney’s death affected how I parent my own kids today. I treat them like humans and not like children who can’t understand things. But Courtney’s death shifted so much more than that.

I think when people grow up without any great tragedies, they’re not forced to question the world around them. Their mom is there, and their dad is there, and life runs as expected. They don’t have to wonder: What does life look like now? After Courtney’s death, I started to feel other. At a core level, I just felt different from my friends and even the adults around me. No one else had an empty room in their house where a child had once lived. No one else had a trunk of treasured possessions—a Raggedy Ann doll or a well-worn pair of overalls—that were the only remaining tokens of a sister and daughter gone too soon. No one else counted down the days until they’d be as old as their sister when she died, wondering if their life had the same expiration date. And no one else felt the pressure of being their parent’s only surviving child.

In my 30s, I started seeing a therapist who told me that the night Courtney died, I aged ten years overnight. Emotionally, I became a 13-year-old in a three-year-old’s body. This revelation put a name to the loneliness I’d felt for decades, making sense of the feelings that I just didn’t fit. But for the next three decades, I tried to. I lived by the script I was handed and tried to be happy with the life I thought I was supposed to live.

As my parents navigated losing a child while continuing to raise another, life took on a predictable routine. In many ways, my mom was an incredible mother. She took me to whatever activities I wanted to go to, she asked me about my day, and I always felt safe in my home.

My mom was always present, which is more than many kids can say. I knew that one day, I’d want to be there for my children in the way she was for me. But from an early age, I started to notice how my mother’s entire purpose seemed rooted in mothering, and how much that purpose diminished when Courtney died.

I saw her stay close to the house, even when I was at school. I saw how all her activities were connected to me, whether it was being a first-grade classroom mom or chaperoning a mission trip. Even from a young age, I would watch my mom and know I didn’t want my life to look like hers. I was terrified that if I lost everyone in my life, like my mom had lost Courtney, I wouldn’t survive. It wasn’t that I needed more; I just wanted something different. I promised myself that one day, I’d find a purpose outside of my children while still being present for them. I figured if I owned my own business, I could make my own schedule, call all the shots and still be invested in something more than just my family.

It was emotional insurance. And like anyone who has experienced significant loss, I wanted to be able to control the outcomes so I didn’t suffer the same pain.

And the pain after Courtney’s death was almost unbearable.

Life without her just became really quiet. After I came home from school (or from whatever other activities my mom toted me to), my mom, dad and I all lived separate lives. My mom would make dinner, my dad would read the newspaper and I would sneak into Courtney’s room, where she had a big full-length mirror. I would sit in front of it and hold a hairbrush in front of me, acting as if it were a microphone.

In lieu of conversation, I would interview myself. I would pretend I was one of the broadcasters from the news or an actress I’d seen on TV. I’d pretend to be leafing through my recently published book, giving a speech at an awards ceremony or sitting on a couch to be interviewed by Oprah. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but as I sat there at five years old talking to myself in the mirror, I knew I was going to be something.

The only problem was I didn’t feel like I had any special talent. In many ways, people who have a natural ability get a true head start in life. Whether it’s music or athletics or even school itself, knowing your talents from day one, presuming you also like what you’re good at, sure can make life's journey a lot smoother.

But by the age of 15, I didn’t know much more about my skill sets than I did at five. To be honest, I think I knew more when I was five.

I did know that I felt destined to do something great. Maybe it was my first-hand knowledge that any day could be my last, but I was determined to live life on my own terms.

That knowledge gave me purpose, but it also left me feeling alone and isolated. The walls of my bedroom were the audience I chose to show my truest self—but whenever I shared my hopes and dreams with friends, I felt more misunderstood than ever.

I’ll never forget the day I told my friend Lily that I wanted to own my own business when I grew up. She looked at me and laughed.

"Jessica, seriously? You? I don’t think you’ll ever do that!"

To the people around me, I was fun and nice and outgoing, but there was nothing really special about me. No one was voting me Most Likely to Succeed.

I didn’t understand how they couldn’t see what I believed so firmly inside, but after Lily’s reaction, I decided it was probably better if I just kept my dreams to myself.

By middle school, I believed I had finally met someone who understood. Jon was my first love, and I thought we were going to be one of those couples who started dating in middle school and stayed together forever. We were Sweet Home Arkansas.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this relationship formed a pattern in my life. When I was in, I was all in—and I was all in with Jon.

He was my boyfriend for one year, three months and 18 days, and I loved him as much as my 12-year-old heart knew how to love. Our moms would drop us off at the movies and we’d walk across the street to eat. We’d sit on the phone, not speaking, for hours. We were only 12, so we didn’t know what to talk about. But I felt like Jon thought I was special.

When I told him I dreamed of moving away from Conway, Arkansas one day, he told me, with as much confidence as any 12-year-old boy could have, You will.

In so many ways, our first boyfriends develop the template for all the other romances in our lives. With Jon, I felt like for the first time, I could be my true self. While other middle school romances started and fizzled within the space of a night, Jon and I were in it for the long haul—or so I believed.

At least, until he called me during the spring semester of our seventh-grade year.

I’m sorry, Jess, he practically stuttered. I really do care for you, but I don’t want to be boyfriend and girl-friend anymore.

I didn’t even reply. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. It was the second hardest day of my life so far.

Jess? Jon asked, wondering if I was still there.

I don’t understand, I said, starting to cry.

If we’re meant to be, we’ll find our way back to each other again, he offered, and I could only hope against hope he was right. I was so devastated that I skipped school for a week.

My friends thought I was being dramatic. They thought I should just move on to the next boyfriend. After all, my friends weren’t staying home every few weeks when they swapped boyfriends.

I woke up crying. I went to bed crying. I wrote sappy notes. I listened to our song, UB40’s Can’t Help Falling in Love, on repeat. I felt the loss of a future I imagined with him, but I also mourned the loss of the one person who seemed to understand me.

I was alone again. Back to being invisible.

Like any good Southern mother in the early 1990s, my mom went to the library and picked up a VHS tape of a Christian motivational speaker explaining how to get through heartache. The tips seemed practical and logical to me:

If the person isn’t the person God has planned for you, then the person you are supposed to be with will be far better. How exciting!

It’s not attractive to pine after someone. That’s not going to win him back anyway; it’s time to move forward.

So that’s what I did. I moved on with my five childhood best friends. When other kids were getting drunk and fooling around in the fields, my friends and I were dancing in my living room. We filled our days with classes and sports and our nights with innocent fun, like baking cookies and making up choreography to our favorite songs.

While I genuinely wasn’t interested in the wild habits of some of my classmates, my parents were also determined that I not put myself in danger.

I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol. I thought it was because my parents thought it would make me a bad person. Smoking? Super bad. And having sex before marriage? Bad, bad, bad.

To everyone around me, I probably looked like a textbook goody-goody.

Maybe it was because I wanted to please my parents, but on another level, I just didn’t care about the things my classmates seemed to care about. Sure, I played sports—like volleyball and basketball and track. I was good enough to make the team, but not good enough to be a star athlete. Whereas it seemed like everyone around me had a model for who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do, I didn’t see anyone I wanted to become.

Instead, I just continued through high school, landing somewhere between above average and below exceptional. I was a solid A-.

In high school, I decided to try out for cheerleading. To get ready, I took private cheer lessons the summer before my sophomore year.

My friend Kristy said, Why are you taking lessons, Jess? You don’t need them. You’re a shoo-in!

Tryouts came and I cheered my butt off. I crushed it. I knew I did. But when the roster was posted, my name wasn’t on it. I couldn’t believe it. No one could.

The night after the roster was posted, Kristy, who made the squad, came over to console me. Instead of celebrating her own victory, she spent her evening reassuring me: Jessica, I cannot believe you didn’t make the team. This is insane! I don’t get it.

Kristy, I said between sniffles, can you think of anything—anything—from the tryout that might have gotten me cut?