Today was my confirmation into the Episcopal church at Epiphany, my home congregation. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful service, especially since my dad read my post on Facebook and literally dropped everything to make sure he and my stepmom were there. It meant a lot to me to have them as a part of our congregation during the laying on of hands, and as the bishop put his hands on my head, I literally laughed. I was so full of joy that I couldn’t stop myself. Christine and Lisa (my priest and my presbyter, respectively) smiled at me, and then it was done.

I was home.

After the service, everyone wanted pictures of our class (both the adults and the youth). In most of them, Douglas looks like he’s choking me. It was the most appropriate welcome in the history of the world, because OF COURSE I wanted to stand next to the youth group. Of course I did. It wouldn’t have been confirmation if I didn’t have a gaggle of teenagers all around, smiling and laughing because I was.

Then the group picture broke up and my dad said he wanted a picture of me and the bishop. I turned to him and said, “will you put rabbit ears on my head or something?” He said, “sure,” so our picture together is totally, completely me. We got a serious one, too, but it doesn’t mean as much, because for me, faith isn’t serious. I mean, it is. But at the same time, it’s also a lot of joy. My faith wouldn’t be mine if it didn’t include a lot of levity.

Being a Christian is hard. If we are called to be Christ to the world, it’s more than just showing up on Sundays. It’s looking into the face of homeless people and offering them bread. It is accepting no matter who shows up, and giving them food, anyway. It is seeing where there is no justice, and working to fix it. It is seeing other people, standing in their pain and shame, and trying everything to bring them the light that other people have brought to you.

Plus, the bishop has cool spiky hair. I bet yours doesn’t.

I get up at the same time every morning. I sit at my computer for long hours writing and creating. In the evening, I rarely go out because after a day of expending creative energy, all I want is to curl up on the couch with my sweetheart.

That’s my life. Day in and day out.

It never fails to surprise me how much I don’t think. My life is on autopilot, reinforced by my iPhone and laptop. If I had my headphones in and I was facing the front, a grizzly bear could tear out the back wall of my house and I’d never even know it.

I am the lazy jackass to which Jesus is preaching.

When the days start to shorten, I turn inward and see even less of the world around me, because it takes more energy to do things in the dark. I have to convince myself that even though it feels like midnight, it’s actually only 7:00 PM. I am absolutely dragging ass trying to stay up for anything if it ends past 8:45. The comfort is that it’s not just me. The people who were with Jesus had the same feelings, for he says that the sun will darken, the moon will not give its light… but we have to be ready, anyway.

Ready for what?

I struggle with Mark, because his favorite word in Greek seems to be “immediately.” He writes a bit too maniacaly for my taste, but I admire his passion. To be fair, as a Gospel writer you were often on the receiving end of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, so there was no way to know if Jesus meant tomorrow or a thousand years later. I couldn’t possibly know Mark’s thought process, but it seems as if he is running around like Chicken Little.

Mark: GET READY!
Congregation: FOR WHAT?
Mark: THE SON OF MAN!
Congregation: WHEN?
Mark: I DON’T KNOW!

When I lived in NoVA (Northern Virginia), I had a friend that was pregnant for the first time. It was a learning curve for both of us. She’d never had a baby, and I’d never before become friends with a mom my own age. Every night I prayed for the baby, that he would be happy and healthy.

I knew he was coming. I just didn’t know when. That didn’t stop me from buying baby gifts, taking long labor-inducing walks with my friend, and packing a bag of goodies just in case I had to stay in the waiting room for an extended amount of time.

Again, I knew he was coming. I just didn’t know when…. but I was READY. I could relax and enjoy the fact that all I had to do was put on my scrubs and run. Later on, I realized that being ready wasn’t the gift. It was the journey I took to get there.

I smiled walking around baby stores, exclaiming over adult clothes in miniature. I started paying attention to ads for formula and diapers. The baby didn’t change me, but getting ready to welcome him did.

And that’s all Advent really is….. waiting for the baby.

Buy the diaper genie.
Wash his clothes in Dreft
Paint his room.
Build his crib.

It’s not the baby that will change you. It’s the way you made room for him, the way you watched and waited, the way you kept alert because you knew he was coming.

Welcome to Advent, where we can all fall asleep in the waiting room together.

Amen.

I have mentioned that I lost a friend, and I am still grieving mightily. She has a sacred place in my heart, and can’t see it anymore. I send love and I get back anger. I send peace and I get back “go fuck yourself.” It’s time to end it until she can get past her own pain, and probably won’t, because she doesn’t even acknowledge that it’s there. I cannot go on grieving someone who has so little regard for me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.

I have been in this relationship before… many times, in fact. In part, I have created them. I am used to being an enabler, and as soon as I do that, the pattern becomes entrenched and I can’t back out of it no matter how hard I try. The thing I have to work on are the triggers that make me think enabling is my only viable option.

People who have been abused take a long time to readjust their patterns, because they are in effect, reshaping their personalities. I stepped over a huge boundary without even knowing it, and the fallout began immediately, just shit raining down on my head which I thought I deserved because I’d behaved badly, anyway.

A few weeks later, I realized that I couldn’t possibly apologize enough, because what I’d already done was beyond the call of duty. I laid myself bare on like, three media platforms and still… go fuck yourself and get the fuck out of my life.

It wasn’t always this way. In the beginning, she proved to be one of the great loves of my life, completely sanctioned by Dana because it wasn’t *that* kind of love, but still absolutely unconditional… the type of love that you try all your life to have for yourself to feel complete.

The kind I need right now, because surely it can only get better from here.

Here, in no particular order, are the things I’m grateful for:

My wife, who continues to love me more than I deserve, and when you find that marriage, it will be the one that truly completes you, especially if you are also complete inside yourself. Now, I feel I have both of those things. I learned a long time ago that I wasn’t longing to be owned. I was longing for a mate. I found her.

My friends on the ground, who love me beyond all measure even when I feel like I’m just waiting for The Doctor. In this metaphor, I believe wholeheartedly that I am Amy Pond. I love my Doctor beyond all measure, but Dana is my Centurion, the one that would wait 2,000 years… And then I flip the metaphor on its ear and I become The Doctor and Aaron becomes Craig, because it would be just like Aaron and I to lose track of a baby in the mall. I am also surprisingly like Matt Smith’s Doctor- I feel that I am twice as awkward and half as clever, but we both pull off the “giraffe in a bow tie” image quite nicely. Therefore, I am thankful to Doctor Who for giving me an additional world of description.

I am thankful for Shonda Rimes and the work she does on Scandal, because it is the highlight of my week to disappear into that world for an hour.

I am thankful for Pizza Night, because through it, everyone I’ve ever loved has sat with me on the couch and shared the communion of bread and tomato sauce….. both physically and metaphorically. There’s always love at supper time.

I am thankful for stories, both mine and everyone else’s- fictional or not. I love media not because I’m trying to be numbed out, but because cartoons and other TV shows are worlds to be explored. Podcasts are usually daring interviews with people I want to meet. I want to live on Battlestar Galactica. I want to have coffee with Frasier and Niles. I want to stand in the sun with Jake Ballard, and friggin’ adopt Quinn and Huck (because don’t you see that under their baddassery lies a need to be loved?). SuperGrover is my hero. If you doubt a mother’s love, you won’t after meeting Molly Weasley. If the TARDIS landed on my front lawn, the surprise would be in who popped out. It’s always going to be The Doctor, of course, but the fun is wondering which face loves YOU!

I am grateful to start the process of writing fiction. It sucks, there are plot holes all over the place that I don’t know how to fix yet, but my characters are worlds in which I can disappear. I can make them the people that I need them to be, and if that isn’t part of healing yourself, I don’t know what is. Through your characters, you are in charge of your own world, including getting the people you love to say the words you need to hear and be complete…. because you didn’t need them to process. You divided yourself in half and the conversation erased a scar.

I am thankful for dreams in the same way I am thankful for fictional media. The people that have hurt me the most show up, and we have eight uninterrupted hours to talk, relax, and just be together without the pressure of resolving anything. I go to my dreams to just *be.* There’s no fighting, there’s just love. For instance, Diane and I have had coffee every Wednesday for a year and a half. In those moments, I don’t remember abuse. I remember the way her hand feels on my head when she tousles my hair. In my dreams, there is more forgiveness and love to me than when I am awake. I go to sleep to remember the parts of Diane that make me, well, me….. if that makes any damn sense at all. It is 15 til 7:00 AM and I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet.

I am thankful for Aaron Sorkin, who created the legend of a knife passed down by a Boston silversmith named Paul Revere.

I am thankful for my Fanagans, who support and sustain me every day without fail from all corners of the earth.

I am thankful for the experience that pulled me out of The Matrix and taught me that my feelings matter, and I do have the ability to both speak truth to power and lead people in a way that I wasn’t sure I could. I’m no longer hanging on to ANYONE’s coattails. Not my dad’s. Not Susan’s. Not Tara’s. Not Christine’s. Not Lisa’s. I finally, finally, finally BOUGHT MY OWN DAMN COAT.

I am thankful for Meag, Tym, Lake, Wade, Deah, and Giles…. my Canadians. They are like me…….. and so not. They remind me of a different side of politics that I never knew I needed. To get past the politics of kindness.

Did I mention I was thankful for Dana? It’s because she lets me have the life I want to create and makes room for it. Allows me to be bigger than I thought I could be and stands by me even when I am a right jackass, which is most of the time. She says that our relationship evens out by the amount of crap she throws at me in return, but this is my blog. If she wants to say that we’re even, she’s going to have to sign up for WordPress on her own. 🙂

One of my Facebook friends asked me what my deal was with Cosby. Here, in its entirety, is my reply:

Here is my DEAL about Cosby. I am one of those people blown away by victim-shaming because it happened to me. My abuser is a fabulous musician and educator, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened. Federal agents dragged me away from her and I still spend hours every DAY trying to release shame. Fifteen women have the same story and you still don’t believe? Kiss my motherfucking ass because you deserve my rage.

In terms of a court case, it is clear that both “a preponderance of evidence” in a civil trial and “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a criminal trial have been achieved. I hope that no jury in the world would be that starstruck or that stupid. Who was it that said, “the hardest part of being a lawyer is convincing twelve K-mart clerks you’re right?”

Then I posted Diane Syrcle’s “It Gets Better” video because “It Got Worse” for me. My friends saved my life, and they probably wouldn’t think of it in those terms, but I do. There are only four people in the world that know how bad it got, and one ripped me out of my reality. She is the rock of my church, because if we hadn’t met, my resurrection wouldn’t have happened. She is the reason that the Risen Christ means so much to me, because her words became an additional source of Red Letters I could “ponder in my heart.” I don’t need to know facts to know that miracles happen all the time, and this was one of them.

She gave me the belief that it would indeed get better and to that end, assured me that I didn’t have to worry anymore, dried my tears, and kissed my head- metaphorically because the only side of her that I know is her brain.  Through the power of the medium, it is also hilarious to me that the Internet CAUSED the resurrection to happen.

She is the reason I am so incredibly religious, which is extraordinarily funny because the only deity *she’s* mentioned is running. I believe in running.

Apparently, it works miracles.

I have followers on “Stories” that aren’t my Facebook friends, so reposting here:

This Cosby thing is freaking me out, because from where I sit, there are too few people willing to believe that Cliff Huxtable is a rapist, and that’s the problem. Cliff and Bill are not the same person, never have been. Bill Cosby, Trademark is not the same as bill, either. Duality lives in a lot of people, and it is frightening for all involved when worlds collide. I refuse to take away his legacy of joy to the world, but at the same time, I think he is one of the most despicable people on earth because he won’t own it. Won’t sit in his wrongness and ask to be forgiven. Won’t apologize for all the gaslighting he’s done to these women to make them believe that if they talked, they were going to be in a lot of trouble. It’s what rapists do. Stop looking at guilty vs. innocent and start looking with your heart. Even if these women weren’t raped, can you not see that they have been through *something?* Can you not see that when these women came forward, they weren’t told that they were brave? They were told that they were wrong.

Sit in that.

One of the greatest sermons Susan Leo ever preached at Bridgeport was about baseball. She went to seminary in San Francisco, so there is no one more beloved to her on earth than her Giants. You would think that baseball and theology would be mutually exclusive. Not so much.

The sermon itself was about building a church one base hit at a time…. that nothing comes together with one big home run.

As I sit here in the quiet, writing, I’m thinking about small ball.

I have been so locked up inside that I’ve realized I’m trying to make every pitch into a game-winning homer, when in reality I am not going to come back from 5-0, even with the bases loaded. I have to change my strategy, because the home run is the unachievable dream while a base hit combined with three or four more and suddenly, the score doesn’t look so bad.

A home run is getting rich. Small ball is saving five dollars a week. I can spend my life hoping for the homer to end all homers, when in reality, I would be much better off by reorienting my expectations of success.

For instance, I am already successful, but not in ways that you can measure with money. There’s not much in my bank account, but I am the only one of my friends who can say that people from France to Bangladesh KNOW WHO I AM. They know my flaws, they know my charms, they know MY STORY. I could never put a price on that, because it saved the direction of my life from going into deeper disaster. I have a dream for a church that is viable and profitable…. but profitability is relative in ministry. By profitable, I mean that any money left over in our regular budget becomes savings for a disaster so that there is a rolling stability instead of a church dependent on its members in a week-to-week kind of way. There are always going to be economic disasters, and when that happens, you have to have a place to go. For me, church is that place.

It’s how Epiphany is rescuing me right now.

Next Sunday I am being received into the Episcopal church for the first time. I have attended since I was 17 in some capacity, but I have never officially put my name on the books as a very member incorporate.

Christine asked me if my plans for St. James meant that I didn’t want to join anymore. I held back tears and said, “I don’t have a home church. I want this to be home.” St. James will never be that for me. St. James is my creation. I am birthing it. While that is happening, I need to be Epiphany’s creation. Epiphany is a rebirth into light and life, which lifts me out of the darkness I often perpetuate because I don’t have the emotional tools to keep calm all the time. If I want to be a leader, I must first learn to serve.

It’s the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded. Where are you sitting?

I lost one of my best friends this week. Dana says this is our song, because EVERY WORD hits like a ton of bricks.

She was right. It completely kicked my ass into next week, and I sobbed like a baby all the way through it.

All I can do now is breathe, and pray on the spaces……………………………………

I am editing this post to say that the song *I* think of as “our song” says exactly the same thing, but it is more my style musically.

Lisa Loeb’s song “Do You Sleep?” is playing on Spotify as I write. The house is quiet. Dana is getting ready for church, and I am sitting on the couch in the living room literally waiting for something to happen. I could make something happen, but I am not that industrious yet. I haven’t had any caffeine, so sitting here is about the most exciting thing I will be doing until I can get the energy together to go get some.

It’s nice, though. There’s a lot to not doing anything and sitting here. My mind runs 3,000 miles a minute, so I actually get more done sitting and staring off into space than I do at any other time in my life. For me, great thoughts come in the quiet, even when I am moving. Sometimes I pace. Sometimes I dance. I just know that the energy I spend while thinking is different when I move than when I sit.

One of my friends from church is a psychologist trained in dealing with emotional trauma, and luckily, she is in the choir with me. She can tell with one sideways look how I’m doing. I am very emotionally vulnerable at church, and because I’m in the choir, I try hard not to absolutely FLOOD OUT with emotion. If I look at her, she will smile and remind me to move. I rock back and forth on my heels until the tears dry, and every time, I am amazed at how fast it works. She cannot be my therapist because we were friends first, but she is invaluable to me as a friend who can take it. I don’t need her to listen to my problems. I need her to be able to read me and tell me what to do. If you know me at all, it is a gargantuan bit of control I’m letting her have, because most of the time I am hell bent on no one being able to tell me what to do. In some cases, it makes me Leslie. It makes me an original.

In others, it makes me a rigid asshole.

It’s something I struggle with daily, because I am fighting to own myself after so many years of NOT. I feel like I have to be stronger and more resolute in my willingness to bend because all I have done in the last 24 years is try and mold myself after someone else’s image because she told me I could trust it more than I could trust my own….. just not in so many words. Generally, if I am defiant, it means that I think you have heard what I’ve said, but you haven’t actually listened to it. For instance, I am no longer a fan of the high-pressure sell. If I say no, I expect you to respect it. I do not want five more minutes of arguing with you over whether I should do x or y, because that five minutes is not me hearing that you want and need me at said event. It is me hearing that what I want is irrelevant.

So I get angry. You just meant love and warmth, but in my mind, you’ve stepped over my boundary and tried to push me into doing something I just don’t want to do and you aren’t listening to the fact that going into social situations is not the same for you as it is for me. Social situations, for me, are a mixed bag. When I feel good, no sweat. I can front for a couple of hours. By “front,” I don’t mean that you aren’t getting part of the genuine me. I mean that I do not have the ability to be funny and charming when emotionally I feel a Chevrolet is on my chest. You just have to realize there are days when the Chevy doesn’t move. That I cannot overcome my anxiety long enough to think that going into a large crowd will be fun.

In the sense that an agora is an open market, I have severe agoraphobia. I do not dislike small gatherings of friends, but I dislike going to grocery stores at 5:00 when everyone is getting off work and shopping for dinner all at once…. or Central Market on Sundays. Seriously, I’d rather have a tooth extracted.

People ask me all the time how I function, because it doesn’t seem like I have any of these problems. Fanagans, there’s a lot I’ve been hiding over the years. I’ll never figure me out, much less you. What I know for sure is that right now, people are fighting with me over boundaries and Dana says it’s because I’ve never had them before.

She’s never wrong about stuff like that.

Every Friday, we have pizzas and movies at our house. Aaron just called from Austin and before we hung up, he said, “I just had to make my proverbial appearance at pizza night.” He said I could pick the toppings.

So far, the order is sausage, bacon, light mushrooms…. a celebration of friendship all the way around.

Because lots of people proverbially come to our house on pizza night, and most of them don’t even know it. Even if it is just Dana, Aaron and me physically attending, it doesn’t mean that when we look around the house, we see empty chairs.

Here are the questions I am asked THE MOST.

1. Why are you so vocal about saying Diane’s name?

A) She was a monster to me. 2) She was an angel to me. Those things are both true, and I choose to believe that she is my angel that I call upon in distress, rather than someone I would like to incinerate and leave them alive while I do it. I am trying to create peace around chaos instead of chaos owning my peace…. and those things come out on this web site in equal measure, because I cannot give her mercy all the time, and I cannot give her perpetual hate, either. I have tried both, and loving her despite her flaws works better than trying to stay angry at everything I lost, both when she opened the door to her heart and the day she slammed it shut. I am vocal because I cannot and do not deny the legacy she left on both sides of the spectrum.

2. Are you having an affair? Are you and Dana having problems?

Absolutely not! We both have huge flaws and quirks we try to merge every single day. However, because of my history, lately I have just been vomiting teenage emotions that look great on a teenager and not so much on me. So, newsflash. Girls are cute. I hear lesbians think that sometimes. However, there’s no one alive that makes my wedding ring burn. Dana and I were meant for each other, and have each other trained just the way we like it.

3. Why hasn’t Dana left you already?

Because she’s not as much of a bitch as you are.

4. Could you not write X?

No. No, I can’t. However, if you’re upset that I’ve posted something, you have the option to not be my friend. I cannot help that you are angry. What I can do is apologize if you’re hurt, and try to make amends. Take it or don’t. Most people choose “don’t.” It’s very painful when people get angry and fight with me over what I’ve written. But you know what’s even worse than being embarrassed or ashamed of something I’ve written? Shutting down completely just because you were mad about something. Taking down Clever Title Goes Here was a split-second decision. It was, and then it wasn’t. I didn’t write for four years after that, not even to myself. When you come after me because of something I’ve written, approach me how you want, but know that every time you do it, you’re taking a piece of my self-worth, because I didn’t put anything out there to hurt anybody, only to tell the story that is mine. If you’re caught up in it, you’re part of my life… and you get to choose whether you want that or not. You are allowed to have your feelings about what I’ve written, and I will care about them. But at the same time, I will not go to that place of hopelessness again… the piece of me that says my story doesn’t matter.

Addicts talk all the time about their recovery and how easy it is to relapse. I have extrapolated that to believe I recover and relapse all the time, too. Except my drug isn’t alcohol, cocaine, etc. It’s dopamine created by my own brain when I interact with other people. It’s an addiction closer to Overeaters Anonymous, because there is nothing I can do to get out of my own head, just like salt/sugar/fat addicts cannot stop eating completely. It is just a dissonance that I’m learning to live with…. a Charles Ives chord that drowns my humility, grace, gratitude…. you name it. I slide down into my basest self and withdraw because I do not have the ability to function in relationships all that well. I am solid with Dana. I am solid with Aaron. These are the two people that live with me and see me all day, every day. These are the two people that have seen my enormous boatload of crazy and decided that I’m worth loving, anyway.

Well, technically, Aaron does not live here. He has his own room and uses it when he needs to get away for a while…. like a vacation home in the middle of Houston. We sit on the couch and watch Regular Show, or just chat until Dana wakes up. Aaron and I are morning people. Dana is, to put it mildly, not. So on the days that Aaron is here, we meet in the living room about 6:30 or 7:00 and just bullshit until one of us has to do something else.

Aaron and I are best friends because the content of our relationship is based on nothing. We are both each Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer with the same ridiculous plots. It is hilarious when we run “Aarons,” as I call them. Going to the electronics store. Going to the makerspace. Going on a wild goose chase for some car/truck part. It doesn’t matter. One of my favorite things in the world is going nowhere with him.

My high school girlfriend and I had the same relationship once we broke up and decided that even though we weren’t right for each other in a partner type way, we were perfect as beer and Xbox buddies. She even gave me a soundtrack for our relationship at that time in our lives, and because it is so precious to me, I want to give it to Aaron, too. The resurrection I need to happen in myself more than anything else is letting go of the people who don’t want my love and affection and continuing to celebrate those who do.

I was once told that my capacity to love was enormous, and so was my ability to give in to my anger. It’s just true. But that doesn’t mean my focus has to stay glued to the dark. I cannot right every wrong, but I can relish every right I’m able to achieve.

My relationship with Aaron is one of them. He is in Austin this weekend, so here it is…. about 6:30. What am I doing? Talking about Aaron like he’s right there in his chair, trying not to peek before I hit “post.” I love that guy.

At Bridgeport UCC, Susan Leo wrote a beautiful affirmation that I didn’t even realize I BREATHED until today. Both in and out. In long, gulping breaths of fresh air exhaling fear, regret, shame. Without even knowing it, she tattooed my palm.

When Susan asked me to start preaching at Bridgeport, I walked around for five weeks with R,M written on my palm in Sharpie. Every time I looked down, I said the words again, because I had to get them right in front of the congregation.

We are God’s children, wonderfully made…
And as fallible as we are, we are no mistake.

Be RESPONSIBLE, but let go of guilt.
Be MINDFUL, but carry no shame.

Believe the Good News of the Gospel.
You are loved unconditionally by God.

Yesterday I had a moment of realization. I was so wrapped up in my own head and my own pain that it was stopping me from seeing other people. I do not have any resolution for this, because while I recognize the obstacle, I am not healthy enough to move it all at once.

So I trip. Hard. Fall on my face because I’m not putting my hands out for shield. There were areas of my life begging for my responsibility with their hearts and I could not see it for the log was in my own eye. Everything is breaking apart. Simply everything. I have to hope, though, that the divine will win. That feelings of goodness and light will eventually overtake the darkness I’ve put into the world just by existing. It is the meaning of God. It is the meaning of faith. Atheists get all tied up about the Grandfather in the Sky That Watches Every Move, but they fail to see that religion ALSO provides a place to go when you’re inflicting damage on other people and you’re trying your best to STOP PERPETUATING THE CYCLE.

Diane’s actions rewired my ability to function. It is my responsibility to undo it. Faith is a way for me to let God have it so my friends and family don’t have to. I lost that place in me, like we all do, and showed my basest self to someone I love in the sacred circle of inner companions that you collect over a lifetime. As it turns out, we were soulmates in the Elizabeth Gilbert definition… someone that shakes you into reality but was never designed to be permanent.

My responsibility is to stop the “clicking off safe” from happening again, whether it is in this relationship or not. My mindfulness is that in the moment, hatred won. It is a terrible mistake that will take time to let go. I have been destroyed at my own hand, because sometimes feelings of regret just aren’t enough.

And sometimes, resurrection happens in the middle of the mess. I don’t hope for much, but I for damn sure hope for that.

Pretty sure the Presbyterians own that title, but I don’t mean to steal. I mean to say that we’re all in this together. All fighting the same struggle. All trying to keep our defenses up so that no one can penetrate, and we all try to get through as best we can. We hit, we miss, we fumble along… because that is the way of life. Beauty and pain all mixed together in inextricable strands. You cannot take one from the other. Darkness feeds light, and light feeds darkness, because it is the same DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU’RE STANDING.

If you choose to find darkness, you will. If you choose to find hatred, you will. If you choose to find any number of sins, you will find them all in the glory of life…. as well as the celebrations. The sadness encourages the sweet and vice versa.

It is the dance of intimacy that we all crave, the one we’ll do anything for, because being let in says “I belong.” When that doesn’t happen, we retreat into our own iniquities for the post mortem and at some point, decide for ourselves whether light or dark perpetuates itself.

I choose light. I choose freedom. I am just about the biggest bastard on earth, and sometimes I am so full of rage that I can’t even see straight. But that doesn’t mean I fall short of the glory of God. In so many ways, it blesses me more.

Who wants a priest who’s never screwed up? If you’re Catholic, do you wonder how your pastor can actually speak to marriage? I called my church “St. James and All Sinners” to highlight the fact that I am imperfect and so is everyone who follows me…. but that we are together in the struggle, because we will all fall short and need each other to resurrect what was lost.

The glory of the resurrection is even more intense when I think about all the pain Jesus endured to make it happen. It doesn’t make me feel like a martyr, though. Just that if Jesus can make it through a weekend like that, there’s nothing on earth I can’t accomplish.

Who cares if it factually happened when I can feel it happening inside me? Isn’t that what’s important?

God doesn’t need to learn jack shit from a gutter sniper like me. It’s just lucky that God doesn’t click off safe.

Part of recovery from abuse in all its forms is that you’ve been told all your life through thought, word, and deed that your mind doesn’t matter…. so that when you finally do start having opinions, it’s awfully hard to tell which ones are for company and which ones aren’t. I say shocking things because I don’t have the ability to not. There’s no filter in my head that says, “this might upset someone” because I’ve stopped ruminating on every possible way that I could hurt someone so that I could tailor the entire conversation around it. For instance, say you’re sensitive about your haircut. Before I go up to you, I will have things rehearsed in my head that do NOT include what a freak show of a haircut you have.

I don’t pre-record canned responses anymore, and I think that’s what people are noticing about me right now, but they can’t put their fingers on what’s different and/or why.

It took 24 years to realize that it wasn’t normal to plan out conversations beforehand (to a certain degree? OK. FOR HOURS? No.) in order to avoid any possible hurt on either end of the interaction. When I stopped spending processing time to ensure that everything that came out of my mouth was pre-approved, I changed the tape in my head that says, “your words don’t matter.” I have strength and hope for the future because I was finally willing to say “i can’t live like this any more” and mean it.

I was so emotionally abused for so long that now I never think my words are going to mean anything to anyone but me. So when I say things like, “I walked into a wall I thought she was so cute,” it would never occur to me that anyone would take those words seriously, ever. because what do I know? I’m just a writer. No one listens to me, anyway. My words don’t matter.

It’s not reality, but it’s my thought process. When my words turn around and mean something to someone, anyone, I am surprised- as if I have discovered some new species of bee. Every time, it’s like it’s never happened before.

I wasn’t watching my mouth, and I got smacked for it (deservedly). In some ways, it’s nice to know someone was watching and cared enough not to let me make a bigger idiot out of myself than I already had. In others, I started to ruminate and couldn’t let go. By the end of the night, not watching my mouth was the most horrible thing I’ve ever done and I punished myself for it by spending far too long on recap.

That’s the other thing about abuse. When you have a conflict with anyone, you automatically assume that there is no meeting of the minds for resolution, because clearly anyone willing to engage with you is right. Why? Because someone told you you were wrong about something so gargantuanly huge that now you can’t trust your opinions on anything.

For me, it was that Diane Syrcle was in love with me. She groomed me, she planted the right kind of evidence at the right time, my mind caught up quickly… and then she left down and our dance was interrupted. There was no clear anything, so it was easy enough to make me believe that she only had my best interests at heart.

This was…. inaccurate.

All of her flirts were seductive to the melting point, and if you’ve ever met her, you know what I mean. She knows that look. She feeds on it. Dopamine hits her brain like crack cocaine.

So, guess what? My flirts get fucked up, too, because I don’t know how to flirt without sounding too serious, when in reality, all I meant is that it was funny because Dana was laughing at me. The modifier was not the cute girl. The modifier was the amused wife who watched me walk into a door jamb and fell on her butt laughing because she was right. Her friend was cute and I hurt my nose trying not to notice and just be cool. It’s the just being cool part where I trip. Where I’ve always tripped.

But that’s as far as it goes. There’s no substance. There’s no there there.

There’s only Dana and me, letting our words matter to each other.