When Austen was a baby, a friend of my husband's gave him a stuffed camel, which she brought for him all the way from Israel. However, Austen never showed much interest in toys without wheels or numbers. The sole exception was a stuffed rabbit my friend Kelly sent him for his first Easter, which he dragged around everywhere by its ears. The rabbit played "Easter Parade" when you pressed its belly, and Austen would crawl with it, each movement of his left hand marked by a soft thud followed by the electronic tinkle of music. Somehow that rabbit set a standard for music, and all songs since have been met with screaming; Austen hasn't liked music since the batteries (that were the soul of his first love) died.

Austen ignored the camel. But it had come from far away, carried over the wide sea just for him, so I put it up in a place of honor on a shelf next to his crib. When Mark and I opened the door to his room, the camel was one of the first objects to greet our eyes each day: sitting on that shelf, gathering dust and watching over our son as he slept curled next to his rabbit.

When Austen was two, Mark admitted that he had had sex with the woman who had so kindly given our baby boy the stuffed camel that sat by his crib nearly all his life. And suddenly my son's room felt poisoned and oppressive: tainted by the presence of that toy. As angry as I was at Mark for anything, I was perhaps most furious at him for letting the blood money of his addiction touch the life of his infant son. But Mark didn't need the sharp prod of my anger to hurt him. Each day, when he entered that room, he had seen the camel there, a reminder of his shame, and he'd been washed in self-loathing that would make him feel physically sick. He tried to avoid looking at it. He tried to think of how to get rid of it, but he couldn't think of how to manage it without arousing suspicion. And he thought it best, at the time, that Austen and I never know what had happened. He would keep this secret, because surely, now, finally, (he said to himself) he'd be able to stop, and this would really, truly (this time he meant it) never happen again. Until at last, something inside him shattered, and he had to admit he needed help.

I took the camel out of Austen's room, and intended to get rid of it. But I couldn't bear to give it to charity, to throw that shadow of betrayal over some other innocent life. And throwing it in the trash seemed too casual an action for a symbol of such hurt. So one night, after we put Austen to bed, Mark and I put the camel in our old charcoal barbecue grill, doused it in lighter fluid and set it on fire. It flared up; flames licked the night air, as it curled and dissolved into a plume of black smoke. Mark and I put our arms around each other and watched it burn, and I felt cleaner and closer to him than I had since I'd learned of his addiction.

We scrubbed the grill and sold it at a yard sale: every bit of the camel gone from our lives. But the simple emptiness and lack were not enough. Like a symbol for our marriage, from the ashes of that shame and pain, I wanted something new and beautiful to arise. So we went to a toy store, and picked out a stuffed bunny (since Austen was partial to them) and took it to a women and children's shelter along with some old clothes and baby gear, hoping some other child would love dragging this new toy around by the ears.

Image credit: Photo by dpade1337 on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

Six years ago, my husband hit bottom in his sex addiction and ended his relationship with Sarah, a young woman from Israel. Mark had met her on a business trip abroad and the two kept up an exchange of pictures, phone calls and sexually explicit e-mail messages for several years. The year my son was born, Sarah took a one year assignment for work in a city less than an hour away from us.

With the stress that accompanied Austen's birth and first year of life, Mark's sexual addiction escalated, and among other things, this escalation included encounters with the now conveniently located Sarah. It took Mark another year after he ended things with Sarah before he admitted that he had a problem and entered recovery, but it was his last encounter with her that marked his low point.

Mark's relationship with Sarah, in part because of the timing and in part because of its symbolic importance, has always held a special significance and pain for me. In the early days of recovery, I used to Google Sarah's name periodically, hoping (in all honesty) to come across news that she had died in some sudden and horrific manner. But I never did find anything. Her full name is, apparently, not very common; I would type it in only to get "no results found" in return.

As time went on, the "no results found" that followed my search entry came to be soothing and comforting. It was as if, when Sarah left the U.S. at the end of her year here, she had moved to someplace so distant that even Google couldn't find her. She had another life in another place and didn't touch my world any longer.

Yesterday, I was searching for an old friend, and having unexpectedly found that person, it occurred to me to look for Sarah once more. I typed in her name expecting to get that familiar, comforting "no results found," but instead, there she was. On Facebook. On websites related to her job and volunteer work. On sites of her friends. Suddenly Facebook and Google both knew who she was and where to find her, and so did I.

I got this burning ache and a raging itch to drink in that crazy pain again. I wanted to send her a message and tell her that I knew her secrets. I wanted to look at her friends and see what other older married men she'd friended. I wanted to take a knife to my old scars and probe the wound, because something about the pain felt good. I wanted to savor it. I wanted it to linger. I had gone looking for comfort, but finding that familiar pain, I wanted to fall into its seductive embrace again. But when I stopped and realized that, it felt like shaking off a dark dream.

I never before had such a vivid understanding of the desire to cut oneself until I saw myself trying to stir up those painful emotions by looking more and deeper; I wasn't cutting myself physically, but I was cutting myself emotionally. I've spent five years healing those wounds, learning to have love and forgiveness and compassion for everyone involved in that situation: Sarah, Mark, me. And what I was feeling in that moment, seeing the search results that now followed her name, wasn't about where I am now; it was about where I used to be and my deep, secret desire for the old, familiar enjoyment of that pain.