MY NUMBER

I lost maybe two numbers I do want. The rest I don’t communicate on WhatsApp with, are people I don’t want any contact with. I changed my number two years ago to get rid of my parents’ neighbours constantly reporting what my sibling was doing wrong at the house. I’m not the police. Telling me criminals are being brought in won’t change that they are, and I’m sure not going to investigate!

I think I’ve stated before that my WhatsApp is currently only for those I feel safe with. I also respect other people. Even when a friend asks for my friend’s number and I know my friend will say yes, I still ask her first if it’s ok to share her number. People who just give my number away are extremely problematic to me. It shows an uncouthness at the very least, and a disrespect, at most.

People who go around me to get my number when I’ve given them a specific way to contact me..? A way they can and do use? Don’t deserve my time. But I gave it. For a short while. Then I asserted my right to consort with who I want in whichever manner I want. As I said before, nobody is owed WhatsApp as a means of communicating with me. There is no law saying I must use it. I come from the day of landlines, I’m never falling for that nonsense.

A while ago, I made a video answering the question, “How is your church supporting you?” recording their favourite and idolised preacher elder and his continuous infidelity and known abuse even before the report infidelity came to light.

As you know, the answer was, “Church..? Support? Nope. They don’t support women whose husbands are liars and cheats and bringing disease into their families.

They support the liar and homewrecker, though.”

I based this on the back and forth between the elders I told, and a female member I told. They are the sum total of ‘my church.’ An ex deaconess and a bunch of elders. I don’t know anyone else at the church. I’ve gone to them telling the entire church how I miss church but am too sick. I wept buckets being real. Nobody reached out. I don’t actually have a church.

Anyway, a youngster newcomer (compared to how long I’d been there) I saw a few times before I could no longer go, who recently got married then commented below the video, saying he didn’t know about the adultery and he would like to support me. We don’t even know each other! He’s new! I even only knew his surname because he came up on Facebook as a suggested friend! That’s how little I know him. I wouldn’t have told him, and let’s be real…How many women in their midlife, would want ‘support’ from a young man.. who they know also idolised their wayward husband? A young man and his wife. A wife she’s never met! Not me!

But I figured I’d give him a chance and gave him my email address. He’s a professional. He should know how to use email. But don’t you know it, he thought he deserved more intimate access to me and bypassed that to ask one of the elders for my number instead, though he had seen my reply. An elder who then gave my number to him without asking me. I first knew of this when an unknown number texted me telling me they’d done so.

I should have just told him that he clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word “support” if he was going against my will regarding how to contact me. That’s hardly being supportive. That’s being performative.

And boy was he. He told me he and his new to me wife, would come to my very busy house in which I get no break or rest except when my best friend is playing with the children, and would bring two male strangers along with them.

Huh!?

Does he know what video he was responding to?

Why would I want four strangers in my house of anxious autistic angels? How would I feel heard, seen, supported in that context?? And then get this, he also said in that same message, that if I’m not sure, they can ask the lying husband first, if he’s ok with them coming over.

I still didn’t shut it down. Yet it deserved a full blown, “Get outta here! I am never going to feel supported by random people who clearly don’t know right from wrong!”

Eventually after more “I know what you need more than you know what you need,” I told him it was an interesting gesture but I’m saying goodbye.

Then last week, someone else got my number. I didn’t even bother replying. I didn’t even listen to the voice note. The last few times they communicated soon after they left Cape Town, they wanted information, they wanted to have their idol prepare a study that they would preach as if presented by them, definitely not a friend at all. And then there was silence for over three years. Until now? On a number I didn’t share with them??

Is it the elder again? For I never gave this man’s wife my number. Or is it his cousin who I told I was blocking because she too idolises my lying, soon to be ex and ignores my children’s hectic problems while bellyaching about her one healthy teen?

But worse yet, this man who got my number without my permission, is the elder who told me in 2016 when I wanted to divorce this liar, “But there’s no better man! Why would you want to divorce him!?”

I should have asked him if he’s had intercourse with him, heard what he says about people behind their backs. Asked him if he’s had money stolen from him by my mother in law while her son kept quiet and allowed it. I should have asked him if he’s raised children with his minimal support and care…And if he has known him as intimately and for as long as I have? Seeing someone acting at church does not show what they are like as a HUSBAND.

Did he even want to know how bad of a husband he’d been? He clearly didn’t know that by 2016 I’d been saying, “Lord, this man is so cold and unkind, I’m so unhappy. But I’m thankful he’s faithful…” There are better men. Men who are fathers at home not only in front of a congregation. There is a man out there who will see that teaching is work. Who will tell me to take a break and rest. There are men who love their wives and value their opinions. There are men who love it when their wife kisses him on the neck or on the cheek. There are men who love it when the wife tells him his eyes are beautiful and won’t scoff. There is much that has hurt me even in not wanting affection but only wanting sex…Don’t tell me there’s not a single man who doesn’t want his wife to hug him and hold him tight. Don’t you dare lie on a whole group spanning the entire globe.

There are men who are faithful. Clearly, this elder isn’t faithful if he thinks there’s nothing better than a cheat that actively pursues married women.

Also, who said I wanted to divorce in order to move to another marriage? I don’t need a man to complete me! I’m complete and whole as I am! I should have asked him what caused him to misogynistic as to think a woman can’t feel whole without a man.

But I didn’t.

He’s also the one who asked my lying cheat how he could embarrass God and chase a married woman.

Oh no, I asked that.

He asked him what I had done wrong for him to cheat.

Why the heck would I want to converse with someone who thinks adultery is not a problem, not a marriage breaker and thinks the sun shines out of my husband’s rear end???

Why did whoever gave him my number have the temerity to do so?

What is wrong with Adventists???

Shame on us, that a Sunday keeper hates adultery so much that he wants to report my church to a higher church body for their support and encouragement of it, while we keep hurting the ones who are already hurt.

I can literally tell you that out of the 30 plus Adventists who know, only three are actually supportive.

And none are from my church. One isn’t even in my country!

Stop giving people my number, you infidels!

Injustice makes me angry. How this man who got my number, has always acted, is unjust. So is the loser who keeps giving men I have no relationship with, my number so that they can keep causing me pain at the worst time of my life.