Sarah gave me some homework to do, which is to write a letter to someone who has hurt you. I told her that I feel like I do enough of that on my blog, and should I just print some stuff out, or write a new one? She said, “either or both.”

Here is my response.

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Dear Leslie,

When Sarah gave you this assignment, she said to write to someone who’d hurt you. No one ever hurts you more than you. You’ve coasted on charm a lot of your life, but not maliciously… because you didn’t ever have enough bravery to look at the pain roiling underneath… or perhaps that’s unfair. It was so far down that it wouldn’t have occurred to you to look. Covering up all that anger led you to be your own worst enemy, because it left emotional blind spots in your heart and mind that have led you to lie, cheat, and steal just to fight your way to the middle. It’s disheartening watching you fight for the middle when you were born with so much visionary capability. You want to see things as they can be, and not as they are. While most people accuse you of living in the clouds, they do not have the capability to take that idealistic version of the world and implement it. That’s what visionaries do. It hurts to watch you squander all that talent because you are afraid to fail and afraid to succeed in equal measure. So you hide, and it’s one of the most self-destructing things you can do, but you do it anyway, year after year.

You don’t want to succeed because you know that in some ways, succeeding means making some people angry. No one is ever going to live your life for you, and you haven’t had the tools to take criticism, not to care when other people hurt because you are entitled to your own emotional space in the world, just like they are. It is not your job just to let everyone tell you what would be best for you and then to do it.

It’s painful to watch, this looking at you trying to get ahead and holding steadfastly to treading still water, so that not even the current is carrying you. You’ve had great jobs, great relationships… and yet, none of them seem to last as long as you want them to. The way you sabotage yourself is intensely frightening, and I hurt for all the moments that you’ve seen everything slipping away and haven’t had the tools to stop it from happening.

I hurt for every moment you’ve felt small in someone else’s presence, because not thinking that you have as much power in the relationship as someone else has led you to try and make yourself feel even smaller than they ever could’ve. Molehills become mountains and you don’t know what to do… don’t have the tools to know how to react to a molehill so that it stays that way. Every mistake is gargantuan. Every time you hurt someone’s feelings, you scream and cry so much more than times you’ve hurt yourself. Self-preservation has been gone for you a long time, so that when you enter into any relationship, there’s no way for you to handle conflict without always thinking the other person is right and going home and abusing yourself… and when you can’t be angry at the people who deserve it, you’re angry at the people you love. Innocent bystanders are tired of it, and I watch it hurt you because you cannot see the consequences to your actions, and people you love don’t understand why. Don’t understand why you don’t fit in, don’t see as they do, don’t know things that “God, everybody knows THAT.” Your abuse begets abuse to those around you, but not more than yourself, because you are in so much pain.

That abuse takes many forms, but most of it is in your mind. You think you are unworthy, and so you act like it. You don’t go out of your way to interact with people, because the less people you meet, the less room there is for any kind of conflict. You are happiest alone, and that probably hurts most of all, because you also know that you are hilariously funny and people love to be around you. It’s you that doesn’t want to be around them. It has caused you to focus inward to the point that even the people who love you are mystified as to why you don’t want to see them, don’t want to talk, don’t want any interaction past a few instant messages because they cannot see that you do not want to do anything wrong, say anything wrong, give anyone any reason anywhere to doubt that you are perfect. Because if you cannot be perfect and someone points out a flaw, they cannot see the hours of rumination you will attach to a moment they won’t even remember later. People think you are being selfish when they cannot get you to interact, but you rarely feel like it because that requires putting on a mask of massive proportions so that even if someone does point out one of your flaws, they’ll think you’re having a normal reaction because they cannot see all the threads that braid in your subconscience that you will interrogate later.

Your pain is mine and mine is yours, but we approach it quite differently. As the part of your mind that can comment on the rest of you, I see things that you don’t. I see that you are very much enjoyed when you are with other people. I also see that you cannot need them, because eventually, they’ll need you, and you know you’re going to disappoint them, anyway, so you back away without making friends. Being in community with other people is excruciating, because you know that you’ll forget to bring food to the potluck and forget to bring those pencils and water bottles you said you’d bring to choir last week… and in your innermost self, you also know that when you forget those small things, you’ll back away from the community altogether in your shame. You forget why you wanted to join a community in the first place, because it’s easier to be alone. There’s no shame in forgetting something if it only affects you.

You don’t know that people are generally willing to forgive you for forgetting small things, but to you, those are the big things…. or they will be, once you get done with yourself. You can barely handle getting yourself out the door, so it’s not surprising that you feel you continually disappoint others because you won’t engage. No, a Halloween party does not sound fun, because you have to dress up to go to those things and your costume will never be right enough, and you feel you know this up front, so it’s easier to stay home. You know you are not gifted that way, and as a perfectionist, you cannot walk into a party looking like a five-year-old made your costume… although if a five-year-old did make your costume, you would wear it.

Your love is gigantic, but few people know it due to the way you’ve let them down. Because you can only take care of yourself, you have no concept of what it’s like to be able to function in a group of friends who love and take care of each other. You never mean to be selfish, you just don’t want to do anything wrong, so it’s better to do nothing at all. You protect yourself to the point that every day is survival mode, and it’s painful watching your “failure to thrive”condition.

I see you with these glimpses of confidence, but they never last very long. You’re surprised that when you ask a girl to dance, she says yes. You’re surprised when people call you attractive. You’re surprised when people tell you that you are brilliant, because when they do, you know it is a lie of immense proportions. When you told Argo that you were fascinated by her brain, you meant that it was strong and vulnerable, angry and hilarious. That there wasn’t a day that went by that you didn’t think you’d ever met anyone smarter or more capable. When she said that she was fascinated by yours, you felt like an animal in the zoo… because why would someone like that think your brain was equally interesting? It couldn’t be. You missed a compliment of massive proportions due to your own unworthiness, and you miss them a lot, from everyone, due to the exact same thing. Your compliments to them are genuine, and their compliments to you are lies.

Watching you feel worthless is hurting me. Which is hurting you. Which is hurting me.

Leslie

My friend Stephanie just asked me if I have any tattoos. I said, “I have five.” She said, “do they have meaning?” I said, “yes.” And just waited. 😛 When she asked the inevitable, I told her I thought it would make a good blog entry and to please hold (your call is very important to us).

5. Tribal Dragonfly

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. This tattoo was not my first one, but it had the most significance until, well, if you’re even a casual reader, you’ve probably picked up on why… or you will when I tell you that it’s been Diane’s totem animal for the longest. I’d just left Portland behind, didn’t even want her to know about it. Just wanted to mark that time as significant in my life, because my life is literally defined by “before” and “after” in terms of the moment we walked into each other’s lives.  It’s on my back, somewhere. I can’t look at my back easily, so it’s been what seems like years since I’ve seen it. And then I moved back to Portland and never went swimming.

Eventually, this one will be covered up. I’ve already met with the artist (that was done over a year ago) and I know what it will be… a dragon breathing fire, encircling the dragonfly and singing it with greys and blacks. Because sometimes you can’t put out fire with water. You have to bring in a bigger fire. If that can’t be done because the lines on the dragonfly aren’t clear enough to be recreated, I’m still planning something for that area. Just not ready to let go of what it might be.

4. Celtic Knot

You’re never supposed to get matching tattoos in a relationship because what if it ends? So Dana and I got matching tattoos significant to our own families so that if we did break each other’s hearts, it wasn’t like she had a Leslie tattoo and vice versa. My last name is Lanagan, and she took my name when we married. Her grandmother’s last name was Mahoney, or as she says with a thick brogue, “we think it was O’MAhoney at some point.” The first time I talked to Dana after I’d gotten settled here was that they were our honing beacons. 😛 It’s also on my back, closer to the base of my spine.

3. Ichthus

My ichthus was my first tattoo. I designed it myself in Photoshop- the fish is a little rounder than usual, but that’s to accommodate YHWH in Hebrew in the middle. You would think that this would be at the top of the list, since my faith has so much say in who I am. But not more than these next two.

2. A Quill Dripping Blood

Based on an old saying that’s been attributed to many, many people: “Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and slice open a vein.” It’s on my left forearm.

1. $1.83

When I was working at Biddy McGraw’s in Portland, Oregon, we had a customer there we affectionately called “Bourbon Bill.” I’d just started my blog and was having some amount of success with it, but Bill was not buyin’ it. He said, “HOW MUSH HAB YOU MADE AS A WRITER?!” I said, “nothing.” He took all the money he had in his pants pockets and dumped it into my hands, saying, “THERE! NOW YOU’RE A PROFESSHIONAL WRITER!” The total was, in fact, $1.83. You cannot even imagine his face because he just did not know what to do when I started crying so hard I couldn’t even stand up. It was a MOMENT. I knew I wanted to remember it forever, and I’m so glad that I made the steps to ensure I always will. Plus, I will never forget FALLING OUT with laughter when Dana’s ex, Carol, saw my quill tattoo for the first time. She said, “aren’t you right-handed?” I’ve been laughing about that one for, oh, 11 years now? So this one’s on my right wrist.

What are yours?

Today’s soundtrack is Chopin, because he brings out ALL THE FEELS.

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Just because the name “Diane Syrcle” doesn’t hold weight in my heart anymore (that was a lie, but I tell myself that every day so it must be true) does not mean that I have gotten out of the worthlessness loop that started when we met. That’s because there were three things going on at the same time that told me I wasn’t worthwhile.

When I told Diane that people had confronted me about her being a lesbian, like I’ve said before, she didn’t confirm or deny. Just said, “how would you feel if people someday said that about you?” I’m sorry, someday? In that moment I knew it was true.

The second was my adult friends’ assessment of the situation, that our relationship was somehow unclean. Just like with my little sister, Diane and I were allowed to fight but say one word about her that’s negative where I can hear it and I will fucking end you… or at least, that’s how I felt at the time. I was just a kid. I didn’t have any power, and I certainly didn’t have the forethought to know that they were right. Do you remember the Anne of Green Gables movie with Megan Follows? I always thought that Anne and Diana were a little bit in love with each other, and that’s how this felt. I was very, very, very high on dopamine for the first time in my life. Surely you recall the first time you felt it, too. The other quote that always gets me comes from “My So-Called Life,” when Rayanne’s mother is trying to explain the friendship between Rayanne and Angela to Angela’s mother. She says, “Angela is the only person that, to Rayanne, puts the world in color.” I’m paraphrasing, but it’s stuck with me since I heard it the first time.

Two years later, I crashed. Diane moved to Dallas and my heart broke so badly that I physically thought I was going to die. Anxiety and panic will do it to you every time. It was the summer before ninth grade, and I couldn’t imagine starting high school without her. Ryan and I had mutually broken up because he kissed another girl at summer camp and I was in love with someone else. It was like, the high-five of breakups. It wasn’t like he couldn’t tell, in some sense, because she was all I talked about. If Tiger Beat had published her photos, they would have been plastered all over my wall. Since she was a schoolteacher, I had her school photos and an autographed (squee!) program from her goodbye concert in the corner of my dresser’s mirror. My dad called it my “Diane Syrcle” shrine and I almost kicked him in the shins because he thought that was HILARIOUS. I did not. We are talking 15-year-old righteous indignation here. There’s not much more powerful than that kind of stare. I learned to forge her signature because I thought it was cool, and as I explained to her, she couldn’t autograph a thousand CDs all by herself. It came in handy as book cover decoration and twice as bad grades that had to have an adult sign to say they’d read them (Sorry, Mom… statute of limitations and all that).

The third thing was one paragraph in the United Methodist Discipline explaining that “homosexuality was incompatible with Christian teaching,” or something asinine like that. I mean, at least if you’re going to be a raging homophobe, John Wesley is a great example of wording it politely, if you really want to know (I see what I did there… I got all Caulfield up in this bitch). The dark underbelly was feeling like I was incompatible with Christian teaching as well. I was just this big ball of anxiety and rage, and as you can tell from this web site, I haven’t exactly progressed from it in other relationships, either. It is my work to do with Sarah, my therapist, to move on from this darkness into the light.

The dark is strong in this one, but at least I come by it honestly.

I moved to Portland thinking that Diane and I could pick up where we left off, but she was so over it… and again, my heart broke into a million pieces with everyone else trying to pick me up when I fell. My friend Anne told me, and I will never forget this, to whisper all my hurt and rage into a rock and when I was finished, to throw it into the Columbia River.
I did.

Later, my friend Wendy (whom I used to call the poet laureate of N. 54th St.) said that the Columbia River goes around “Cape Disappointment” before it reaches the Pacific Ocean. I found it appropriate, named for the point at which Lewis & Clark thought the river ended and later found out that it went to the Pacific Ocean after all. I know that my rock didn’t make it to the Cape, but the water around it certainly did, carrying all my secrets with it.

There were quite a few rocks, actually…. all at different points in my Portland experience because when Diane was warm and affectionate toward me, the rest of the world faded away. Then, I’d open up to her and she’d run, so there’d be another trip, as my friend Karen says, “out the Gorge.”

My worthlessness loop didn’t really get any better until I truly befriended Dana, because when I told her my secrets and lies, she told me hers. It was an equal relationship, one in which I got back everything I put into it… and it was the first time I’d even been open to the idea. I was used to feeling like shit. It was foreign to me to be happy, and to have someone validate my pain because she knew Diane and could vouch for both sides of the equation because she could see it.

Happiness lasted longer with Dana than it had with anyone else, but the darkness returned in a big way as I started to vomit emotions everywhere the deeper Argo dived into the wreck, because she could see things that I couldn’t, and it wasn’t a matter of convincing me I’d been emotionally abused. It was that the more I talked, the more her alarm bells went off.

It hadn’t been all sweetness and light. Plus, since Dana was reading everything going between Argo and me, she was sythesizing information just as fast. They were a support system of enormous proportions, and it just turned Dana into a rabid dog because no one hurts more than when they’re watching the one they love suffer. There were times when she hurt so much more than me that she literally sat on her hands not to throttle Diane in the street.

During my friendship with Dana, I moved to Houston and moved back to Portland less than two years later. While I was gone, she seethed over Diane and me to the point that Diane didn’t go into the grocery store where Dana worked for eight months… and then was surprised when she wanted my contact information and Dana wouldn’t give it to her. Dana said she had to ask if I wanted it. Dana wasn’t nearly half as dumb as I was.

Hindsight is 20/20, but at the same time, it was also the reason I knew I was marrying the right woman. She knew all my shit and wanted to marry me, anyway… and as our relationship went on, her love just became too clean for me. Too much sludge in my soul not to feel justified in being treated like shit, so I sought out things to encourage it… things that were ultimately dealbreakers for Dana, and there were many, not just one.

As a result of all of these things, Christianity is hard. Nadia Bolz-Weber says that I should take a page from Martin Luther’s book and when shame threatens to overwhelm me, I “should throw things and get angry and say, ‘I AM BAPTIZED.’” Not “I was, but I am.”

Shame, redemption, and relief. Emphasis on the “redemption and relief,” appogiaturas intact if you’re humming the hymn in your head. Like Nadia, I just can’t pull off Atheism because in no way do I mean disrespect, but there’s no atonement in it for me. When I feel lower than low, I need someone to say that I am forgiven, because I won’t say it on my own. I hope my ego never gets so big that I think I don’t need it. As my worthiness and visioning capabilities go up, I will need God more and not less, because if I don’t, it will cause me to think I’m right (and righteous) way more than is humanly necessary. I’ve just realized that now I’ve pulled myself out of the shame so bad it nearly killed me into the will to survive.

On some days, I even think I’m thriving.

Amen.

When I write letters, I use notebook paper. It’s not fancy, it’s just comforting… kind of like writing notes to friends in school when I was young. The other day I wrote six pages to Argo, a letter that won’t be sent but just live in one of my dresser drawers. I write like that a lot. I still have a 15 page letter I wrote to Katharin somewhere in my archives. I don’t talk about Katharin much, only because there’s a lot of pain and sludge in my soul about that relationship. The point is not Katharin. The point is that sometimes, it’s the writing of the letters that brings the most ablution, not the mailing of them. I’d never put it together before, but perhaps there’s a reason why water and lines on notebook paper are both blue… they both bring out the most peace the longer you stare at them.

On those blue lines, my relationships with people can be what I need them to be instead of what they are. By not sending the letters on them, I can imagine a response instead of getting one. It’s part of my personality- the vision of what things can be instead of cold, hard reality. Imagination has become not so much with the escapism, but the creation of the future I want instead of the one I thought I would have in the years BA (before Argo). I’ve written before that Argo helped me kill the monster under my bed. In the years BA, that monster tied me to the cold, hard reality that I would never get what I wanted… and rumination to change that existence ate up any room I had to process what my life looked like outside of it. I couldn’t let go of the past because on blue lines, I tried to change it every single day.

Here is an excerpt from thinking about that time, in a blog entry from 2012 called When We Were Young:

I went to school and suffered through every class. Nothing mattered except making it to 6:00 PM, where I was supposedly doing homework and realistically writing you notes that I hoped you would enjoy. Over time, I noticed that when I was thinking about you, my handwriting started slanting to the left, my d’s looked like eighth notes and my D’s had to curve just so. I used endless amounts of paper, because if my D’s did not curve just so, I had to start over. It rarely occurred to me to just use pencil.

I’ve often called Diane my blog before I could type, and no sentence in my life rings with more truth than that one. Before I could type, there were more blue lines than you can possibly conceive. I wrote to her every day, at multiple times, because I did not like school and I was actively trying to get away from it. If you read When We Were Young, you will understand why. The $ .50 cent tour is that I could not concentrate on anything but her and how to save her from the life she was leading. I just didn’t understand that it wasn’t my job. She ended up saving herself, but I would like to think that our relationship was a block in the building, one piece of one wall that has my name on it, despite the fact that we have not spoken in years and I’m not really open to it now.

Being a Christian and wanting Christ’s resurrection in all things, for me, does not necessarily mean that I should open myself back up to relationships that hurt me. In these words I realize that Argo probably feels the same way about me, even though she would never use the words “Christ’s resurrection” in the first place. However, I would like to believe that just as I have found peace within myself over what happened with Diane as a child, that Argo will find peace over what happened between us. My twisted heart from childhood showed in my relationship with Argo, and that may not be fixable as I try to make myself clean.

In my relationship with Argo, I do not have the right to get my way… just as I believe Diane doesn’t, either. The difference is that Argo and I are both well into adulthood, and when Diane and I met, she was an adult and I, to put it mildly, was not. Argo and I both have emotional tools that just don’t happen in childhood, especially in a relationship where the balance of power is so off that it is a never-ending tug of war to bridge the divide between “being little and being big.”

The emotional tools of adulthood are something that I’ve had inside me for a long time, but refused to use them because I was stuck… a child in an adult’s body trying to fake it. I could give other people the use of my mental toolkit, but I couldn’t take those words and apply them to myself in any meaningful way. I would like to believe that’s why in the beginning, Argo thought I had amazing insight and clarity, and as she delved deeper into my psyche, she discovered that my id supplanted both my ego and superego, because that’s the engine that drives a child, and not the adult I present to the world. She loved the mask, and when it came down to the real me… well, let’s just say that was far less attractive.

It is the sludge in my soul that I am driving out with light after having lived in darkness for so very long.

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

John 3:19-20

Because let’s face it, darkness hides our sins, but it doesn’t release them, either. On blue lines, I name them, and when I say them out loud, they become real. If they are not real to me, they are lost in the darkness somewhere I cannot reach, and therefore become the invisible albatross around my neck that I carry willingly, because I do not want anyone to find out what lies in my darkness, least of all me.

I’ve been reading Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber, and if you are my Facebook friend or a subscriber to my feed, you know that I’ve shared several quotes from it. Yet another line sticks with me, and the context is that she has just become a hospital chaplain for a clinical rotation requirement at Iliff. Someone says from their hospital bed, “I’m an atheist!” She thinks, “good for you. I wish I could pull that off.” Her point is the same as mine, that it takes divine intervention for most people to walk in light, because that thread of divinity is coming through us. It is not of us. I don’t believe that there’s a grandfather in the sky, but I do believe that when faced with darkness, my ego cannot be the biggest thing in the room. There is a submission when you believe in a higher power, and it does not matter which one… because most of the time, it is ego that creates darkness in the first place.

It is amazing how quickly giving up my ego and submitting to the power of the universe yielded much better results than thinking I could handle everything on my own. And by everything, I do mean everything. It may not be here, but you can fucking bet on it that there’s a piece of notebook paper somewhere, spilling it all out in purple or green ink (my personal favorites). In several instances, I have used a fountain pen filled with ink that I thought looked like writing with coffee and one of my friends said, “that looks like shit.” Appropriate, because the words themselves were absolute rage.

The rage was mud, the blue lines water washing it away.

Amen.

I don’t even know where to start today because my mind is full. There are so many things I want to tell you and yet, I cannot pick a window and stick with it. In one is my therapy appointment with Sarah. In another is my birthday tomorrow, and in another is the guy who literally thought I was stalking him at Starbucks and I thought we were going to have some trouble. The fight in me raised its ugly head, because flight has receded. I won’t back down.

I guess let’s start there. The guy came up to me and looked at my backpack and said, “is that Swiss Gear?” I looked at the red logo and said, “yes… I guess it is.” He said, “are you stalking me?” I said, “not yet…” thinking that the guy was joking so I joked back. I was sitting down and he was standing up, although he did not look in any way threatening. He was only a little taller than me, and just as thin. In a different life, we could have been twins. Except that he had wavy hair and I have straight, we really did look like brother and sister. The true difference between us was that even though we were both wearing nerd glasses, but he was hearing voices in his head and I do not.

I exude “don’t mess with me” now. I have had enough time around mental patients from being in government mental health care that it’s like a type of armor of “just try me.” I don’t know where I got it. I think most of it is thinking to myself “what would Jeffrey do?” The aforementioned insane nerd went over to another table and asked another girl if she was stalking him as well. I stood up and said, “dude, WHAT IS YOUR ANGLE?” I was hoping that someone from downstairs would hear there was trouble and call the police. As I was trying to calm mental nerd into a state of “I’m going to get my ass kicked if I keep this thing going,” the boy next to me at the computer table went downstairs and told them to call the police and get him out of here. Mental nerd saw the boy next to me going downstairs and starting heading out the door on his own before the fuzz arrived.

Good man.

So that’s what hardcore looks like… another version from my sweet Apple Sister, but hardcore nonetheless. Another reminder of the horrible things mental health can do and how I need to take care of myself so that hardcore for me keeps itself at bay.

Which leads me right into my session with Sarah, who I think is the therapist for me. She told me it was so brave of me to show up even though the last four therapists had wounded me to the core. She told me it was brave of me to check myself into the hospital when I told her what Argo said (“Leslie, why do you think it’s everyone else’s job to fix you?) and how it had beget action instead of just continuing to get worse. I told her that Argo’s words had reinforced that it was my mental illness making me think my suicidal thoughts and not my authentic personality, and all of the sudden I was able to take control of it. Own it. Get myself better instead of waiting for someone to magically show up and wave a wand. I was able to tell the difference between my personality and my illness, possibly for the first time in my life.

I just thought my illness was me, and it’s not. It’s like letting my diabetes get out of hand and refusing to go to the doctor until my leg is about to fall off. I didn’t continue to find a therapist that would work for me. I didn’t realize how bad my anxiety had gotten so that I felt the fight or flight physical response all the time instead of just when I needed it. I put all my faith in my ability to help myself, and didn’t realize until Argo said her magic words that I was wrong. I needed help, and quickly, or an illness that needed to be managed was going to kill me because what I believed about myself wasn’t real. It was a mirage I was chasing through the desert, or the road looking wet on a dry day from the sun right up until you drive near that patch.

There is a difference between me and my disease, and it took two things to convince me of it. The first was The Mental Illness Happy Hour. Paul Gilmartin repeated over and over how our negative thoughts are apart from what we are, that they are not a reflection of personality, but of illness…. Thus the title of the podcast, I’m sure.

The second was getting the right medication and the right cohort at the hospital. I couldn’t have had a better environment with which to tell the difference between who I am when I am sick and who I am when I am well.

Sarah listened to all of this, and asked me about early childhood trauma. I told her about my house burning down when I was 12, and six months later meeting Diane in the face of losing my home and my city (we’d just packed up and moved from a city of 2,000 people to Houston).

But I also told her my plans for St. James, and how I didn’t want all of our sessions to be about bitching about my problems, that I was a visionary and I needed help finding my own path, my own staircase to wholeness in terms of being a pastor and creating the church I know I’m here to, in a sense, own. I told her that nothing extraordinary, except perhaps The Bible, was ever created by committee. I told her that I wanted to be able to vision by getting people to follow me and what I want to create, not a group of people who are there to say, “I think we should do it THIS WAY.” My theory is this: if you want a pastor who’s spent all that money to become ordained and learn how to be a professional pastor, why are you hiring me if all you want to do is create the church you want? You could do that without me. The congregation is important to the life of a church, but “where there is no vision, the people perish.”

It took me a long time to learn that visioning wasn’t ego. It can be, if left unchecked, but at its core, visioning is the idea that what lives in one person’s brain cannot possibly live in several people’s at once.

So I talked to Sarah about the staircase and how to get me ready to take it. I told her that I’d been an INFJ since birth, and that this idea had lived in me a long time. That St. James was already started online and that I needed a vision in order to raise close to 15 million dollars- not for myself. It’s because real estate big enough to hold all of us in DC isn’t cheap.

I also told her that the first book I’d ever been given in terms of homework for therapy was before it was even a thing was The Four Agreements. She wrote in her notebook that I liked bibliotherapy, and I liked it. It has a title. I said, ‘as an aside, I am sure as a therapist you’ve run across Codependent No More” once or twice. That author has written a book called “The New Codependency” if you want to check it out.’ She laughed and said, “yeah. I think I’ve heard of it…” All therapists know about Codependent No More. It’s like some sort of textbook, you know, like Intern or One L.

I set therapy for Wednesday at 4:00 every week, because as I told Sarah, I go to church every week and this seems like a good mid-week check-in. She agreed. I think I have finally found someone who can help that won’t dump me. We’re probably the same age. If she tells me she’s close to retirement, I’m going to ask her to marry me, because obviously she’s independently wealthy. :P~~~~

My birthday is choir practice. I don’t know how I feel about that. On one hand, it will be great to be lost in the music. On the other, I’ll go home alone. It’s not the first time I’ve spent a birthday alone. I will probably write it out, because this is the first year in a long time in which I can truly say I feel a year older. Perhaps an accelerated five.

And on that note, it’s time to go home.

After the breakthrough in therapy, I realized that it was okay to be angry. Not filled with rage as I once had been, but the normal amount of angry that I kept inside because I felt that both Dana and Argo had stopped listening to me and only talked to each other about me. My anger centers around the fact that when they talked to each other, it changed the narrative of my life. I was no longer a person with a range of emotions, but a mental patient with which had to be dealt. My opinions and feelings didn’t have weight anymore. I was just a goat-ropin’ clusterfuck who couldn’t emote without them thinking that it was some kind of psychotic break, even though I’d been through enough therapy and med changes that I wasn’t the person I was before I went through it… and yet, they wouldn’t let my character change to reflect the real me and not the one they’d known in the past. I will admit that I was a bastard to both of them, and have spent many hours trying to think of ways to make it up to them. I doubt they will ever work, but thinking about how to put joy into their lives feeds me, even if it doesn’t feed them.

I remember so clearly the moment I realized the revelation that to them, I was no longer a person but just a mental patient. I have talked about it before, but it bears repeating now.

I was sitting on the floor of the hallway that looks into Dana’s room, talking to her about the time I’d spent in the hospital. She was asking me questions, and when I started to answer, she told me to stop while still asking me questions. I’d begin to answer, and she told me to stop while still putting another question into her response. I’d begin to answer and she told me that she was going to call the police if I didn’t leave her alone. I did not move from my place in the hallway, and I did not even raise my voice. I was, at that point, already taking Neurontin (the Klonopin would come later), so I never got rattled. I just answered the questions that she put before me until she called my dad and told him I was having a psychotic break. I wasn’t. It was just her way of “dealing with me,” because apparently I wasn’t allowed to have emotions anymore, even when I was quietly talking.

Apparently at one point, someone told Dana (I really don’t know who) that I was suffering from borderline personality disorder, and she turned it into a weapon of mass destruction. She talked to my dad for about a minute and a half, and then he asked her to put me on the phone. I told him honestly what had happened, and he said, “why don’t you just go to bed? It’s not like anything more is going to get done here tonight. She’s not listening.” I took his advice and locked myself in my office, my refuge from all the madness. I took a sleeping pill so that I would indeed get some rest, and it helped enormously because I slept for a full 12 hours.

In the hospital, that never would have happened because the nurses woke us up early and forced us into the showers, thinking that we wouldn’t take care of ourselves if left to our own devices. The problem with that is the sleeping pill I was taking wouldn’t wear off by then, so I would get ready for the day feeling like I was walking through Jell-o, and we weren’t allowed any more caffeine than a bottle of Diet Coke now and then, and cups of shitty coffee at breakfast. You know what I’m talking about. Hospital coffee. Plus, they wouldn’t put a coffee maker in the cafeteria. If you wanted more than one cup of coffee, you had to order it the night before, and they wouldn’t bring you a carafe. There would literally be three cups of coffee on my breakfast tray. It was something we all laughed about, and one woman in particular (maybe Rhonda?) said, “great. You’re already peppy and cheerful ENOUGH. Now you’re going to have MORE energy?” I laughed enough for three people I thought it was so funny.

I could have handled it if I could’ve drunk Monster in the morning, because three cups of shitty hospital coffee is punishment when you literally feel hung over from sleeping pills. I have the same sleeping pills now, and what I do is take all my morning meds with a 200mg caffeine tab and go back to bed for 30 minutes until it kicks in. It doesn’t make me jumpy, it just erases that feeling of never-ending lethargy. That way, I get a good night’s sleep, but I’m not STILL asleep and awake at the same time the next half a day.

The point of telling you all this is that I am taking care of myself in the right way. I am no longer subject to the physical effects of rage or that “fight or flight” feeling that used to make me crazy (for lack of a better word) because I couldn’t get it to recede on my own. I literally had a panic attack the day that Dana showed me The Reconciliation of a Penitent in the Book of Common Prayer. She had our priest walk her through it, and she brought it to me when she made the appointment with our priest. I fell to my knees and started hyperventilating. My sins became overwhelming at that point, just making me want to crawl on my belly with shame. It was in that moment that words like “I am a worm” really started making sense, and I started feeling ALL THE THINGS, perhaps for the first time since all of our fighting started.

I don’t think Dana realized what was happening, and called my dad and my stepmother to come over immediately. I didn’t need them at that moment, although it was comforting that they came. What I needed was to sit in my shame and my own penitence. I needed to feel the hurt. I needed to feel all the pain I’d caused. I needed to feel the way I’d been hiding and let it all come to the surface. It wasn’t the first time that the Book of Common prayer put me into that space. The words that get me every damn time are thus (taken from Rite I):

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against thee
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved thee with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we earnestly repent.
For the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in thy will,
and walk in thy ways,
to the glory of thy Name.

Amen.

The church I consider my “home” in Houston is St. Martin’s, and when I started going there at 17, they used Rite I, so those are the words I have committed to memory. You could wake me up in the middle of the night and even with my sleepy eyes, I could recite them.

As an aside, every Episcopal church I have attended since has been Rite II, and I will never get used to it. I go with the flow, but I am a Rite I baby and that is all you need to know in terms of how deeply I feel when the pieces of Rite I that are not used in Rite II are missing. The pieces that are missing, to me, are the ones that are penitent beyond belief, and that is what I feel I need every Sunday.

The UCC does not have anything similar, but it will when I have my own church. It may be in modern, inclusive language, but I feel that other people have the same need I do… to be released from a week of sins, no matter how far down they go. For me, it can be anything from telling a white lie to outright flaming a relationship to the ground. My penitential order is a song by the Indigo Girls that Dana recommended to me called “I Believe in Love.” It fits my relationship with both Dana and Argo perfectly…

When we tried to rework all of this
Each to her rendition
Painted ourselves in a corner
Lost for ideas blindly fishing
For a compliment or kindness
Just to bring us into view
But you could not interpret me
and I could not interpret you.

With Dana, it’s the idea that even in our closeness, we did not know each other. With Argo, it was the same with a different twist. I knew her mind in the cloud, but I’d never given her a hug, I’d never met her for lunch, we’d never spent a Sunday with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of wine devouring Veep.

With Argo, there was a sense that she was real, and at the same time, a wall between us of anonymity that kept her from being the human she was at the end of the line. It made it easier for me to flame our relationship into the ground because in a sense, I wasn’t hurting a real person. It was a mistake I will regret for the rest of my life, because she was/is as real as the keyboard on which I type.

It is telling to me that I was willing to hurt her in order to make sure Dana knew she was my one and only. Telling only because she wasn’t, at least in the traditional sense. I wanted to love them both- Dana as a wife and Argo as that friend who loves me beyond all measure. Most people have that, but Dana didn’t want me to have that friend. Didn’t want me to have a friend in which I could share my secrets and lies. Wanted me all to herself and would do anything to get it.

Dana manipulated me into thinking two incorrect things. The first is that Argo was that friend who would take without giving. The second is that Argo was really in love with me, she just couldn’t tell me, and that made her a threat to our relationship because there was no way that Dana could compete with Argo on any level. It was a brilliant way to isolate me from them both, because I couldn’t decide who was right. Dana had been the river of emotion running through my body from the moment we became best friends and later on, married from the first date. From the first date, she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life lying next to with my computer and my phone. I indeed asked her to marry me on our first date, because I knew it was right and good. We’d been best friends for years, and I got the sense that because we’d taken on each others problems as best friends, we already knew what contract we were signing.

Argo was my seven year itch with no romantic strings attached (except mine to her, through no fault of either of us given the way “I was raised”), and I’d hoped that Dana would see it for what it was and just let it go. I would get over the part of myself that Diane had planted, maybe not even consciously but for better or for worse, it was there. I would work it out, and Argo and I could be the friends that we set out to be- warm hearts that could go to each other in our pain.

When Dana didn’t let go, it gutted me in a way I’d never felt before. All the issues I’d been struggling with over the enormity of Diane’s abuse bubbled up in me and according to everyone else, I went crazy. According to me, I was just getting started on the path to being my authentic self.

When I was trying to put context around my behavior, to them it came across as me trying to blame outside influences for my behavior instead of owning them. I didn’t believe that for a minute, because I believe that I am responsible for my own choices and a product of my environment all at the same time. It was, to me, a ridiculous response because it was coming from them, not even trying to understand what I was trying to say but reading their own responses as Truth and mine as crazy.

The more they stopped listening, the more unworthy I felt. I got to the point where I wanted to kill myself because I felt it was better not to be there than it was to let the people closest to me hurt because of what I was to them. I am pretty good at recognizing when mental illness is telling me what to do instead of my honest personality, so I knew I was spiraling out, I just didn’t know how to fix it. I reached out to Argo and told her at that point how I felt, and though I have said this before, I will say it again. She told me, “why do you think it is everyone else’s job to fix you?” They were the words I needed to, as Jonathan says, “jump in for myself.”

Because Dana was there to see what was happening and Argo wasn’t, I sent her a voice mail saying that I’d checked myself into Methodist hospital’s psych ward and I wished I could send her a picture to ensure that my words matched my actions. It was a thank you of massive proportion, because it was her words that created my action in the first place. I didn’t just sit around and let my feelings of unworthiness get worse. For the first time in my life, I took steps to create my own future instead of letting other people dictate what was best.

As Susan Leo said, “resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.” Those words sustain me all the time. Every moment of every day, in fact, because the mess isn’t over. I just pray and pray and pray that I will be forgiven by both Dana and Argo, because I know that I am being penitent enough to forgive myself.

However, I identify with The Good Shepherd, searching and crying for my lost sheep.

Amen.

I switched my Facebook account to Stories That Are All True, and am using Tumblr to post to my LDLanagan account. Now I just need to make sure I’ve done everything correctly. Fingers crossed.

****Update*** I set it up right. I am a genius and you need my mind. Double points for catching the movie quote.

I got to Vesta on Wednesday at 12:50, and read my Kindle until about 2:40. It was all right- the intake process is a first-come, first-serve sort of operation, and I was lost in Obama’s Wars. Now that I know a lot of soldiers, I was looking for their pictures, even in text. I found them. Every single base is somewhere that a friend was stationed. Then, when I got home, I scared the absolute bejesus out of myself by watching Zero Dark Thirty… but that is neither here nor there. We’re talking about intake here.

The therapist was a lot better than the one I saw in Rockville. She told me to stick to facts, because she did not want me to flood out. I thought it was so sweet, but I said, “I’m on Neurontin and Klonopin right now. Nothing will rattle me at the moment.” She laughed her ass off and said, “ok. Let’s get started.” She took almost an hour and a half with me doing a complete H&P (History and Physical, for those not in the know). I just rubbed my left ring finger (right now, not then) knowing that something was missing and then realizing what it was and saying, “OMG. Duh.” The indentation is still there after seven years, and I can’t believe that I still rub it… not to get it out. Just to remember. I probably did it because the first thing I told her was that I’d just gotten divorced in February and it was a disaster of a situation. I also told her that I’d lost a good friend at my own hand at the same time, and it bothered me just as much… mostly because I believe then and sort of believe now that it was all my fault. I had a breakthrough in therapy that convinced me that perhaps I was wrong, and for the first time in months, my stomach settled from the ever-present clench I’ve felt since then. It’s something that’s private between Argo and me. The point of the story is that I had a breakthrough that I thought would never come.

I also got some relief when she asked me if I’ve ever committed any violence against anyone, and I told her about the fistfight where Dana pushed me and I reacted by punching her. She told me that didn’t count because it was a reaction and not an action. I am sure that several people will raise their eyebrows at that assessment, but at the same time, I can’t help but believe her, because that’s what I felt in the moment. There was no way I was ever going to be bigger than Dana, but I thought I had to prove that I could be if needed. Just went off like a Yorkie with a God complex. It was a breakthrough to realize that Dana and I had done an incredible amount of emotional violence to each other, but it did not mean that “she needed hitting” was a valid defense.

It stopped me from leaving the house. I stopped going to church. I stopped everything in my life because I did not want to have to explain the bruise under my eye to anyone at any time. The flip side of this is that I still miss Dana, I still reach for her in the night because I am expecting her to be there because I’ve just dreamed that she is. When I wake up, I have a half-second of wholeness before I realize that I am whole within myself without her, and that is how it needs to be.

I am still furious with Argo that she made my move all about her, because it wasn’t and she wouldn’t listen to me. She just assumed the worst because we were already mad at each other- first children who couldn’t let the other one win under any circumstances. I’ve often thought about what a “win” would have looked like to me, and it would have been this: “I love you, but I cannot deal with you right now. I feel threatened that all of the sudden, you’re moving close to me… but let’s cool off and see what happens, even if it’s years in the future.” The real reason I came to DC is twofold. I already had friends here- real ones- and I didn’t want to start fresh. Like, there was no way I was just going to take off for Minneapolis and hope for the best, you know? The other thing is that Dana’s parents live here, and I liked that even more. That maybe, years in the future when we are both settled in ourselves, our paths may not be parallel, but certainly perpendicular…. crossing at a time when we could sit at a cafe with a cup of coffee and not ruminate on the past, but tell each other what we’ve done with our futures. It would delight me to no end if that meeting ended in kisses, but I’m not counting on it. We might fall into old patterns and that would be a disaster for both of us. Plus, I always got the feeling that she was hiding something from me, and I want a woman who is not afraid to kick my ass into next week when I need it. I think that’s why I thought Argo was so perfect~ she wasn’t afraid to tell me I was being a “judgmental dickhead” when I deserved it. Another funny memory I have of her is that she helped me solve an issue with Aaron and when it was over, she said “tell him he owes me a fucking drink.” That’s my girl. 😛 It is my eternal hope that one day, he’ll be able to buy it for her.

And as I was thinking all of this in my session with the therapist (whose name I cannot remember), everything came in waves. Nothing was chronological in my thinking because it never is. I work in a Minority Report kind of computer, where everything is on the x, y, and z axis. Some things are closer, and some things are further away, but they all combine into one narrative. Dates and times are not my specialty, but details are. I may not remember your first or last name, but I guarantee I will remember if your shoes were untied the first time I met you and if you wore perfume I did or did not like.

Dana was wearing a George Mason sweatshirt that her godmother had given her, a detail I remember because when I lived in Alexandria, I worked for ExxonMobil  at Gallows Rd. and there was a branch of George Mason right down the street. I let Argo scare me into not moving back to Alexandria, and I will never forget that fact, either. It was something I also told my therapist, because if there is a definition of unfair, I thought that was it. But Black Friday became Easter as I found out that Montgomery County was way more equipped to deal with me and my shit than NoVA ever would. But I still miss my old house, my old Metro stop, my old everything.

Maryland was new and exciting, but at that time in my life, I don’t think I was prepared for it. I told my therapist that as well. I also still remember flying down Little River Turnpike in my little white Mercedes because the freeway was always a nightmare. I remember driving 395 into the city and having tears come to my eyes as I passed the monuments nearly every single time, because I was so overwhelmed by their beauty.

It was never about Argo, but feelings are feelings and hers are just as valid as mine, fair or not.

It was about me trying to find myself again, after Kathleen and Dana, the people I then considered to be the closest people to me in my life, and how I needed to be single now, because I’ve found that I just do not function well in a relationship. I am too insular, I don’t share enough because I am scared that no one would love me if I did, and I disappear for hours at a time with my reading and writing. I think INFJs are programmed for it- not necessarily the unworthiness bit, but especially the disappearing act they are wont to do.

I also told my therapist that Dana and I grew apart because of Argo, because Dana couldn’t believe that I loved her more than anything despite loving Argo to the ends of the earth AS WELL. It wasn’t polyamory, or at least, it wouldn’t be once I got my act together and stopped feeling all my little kid shit. It was that Dana had always been my best friend, and the way I viewed it, she got a promotion and Argo was there to take her place. She wasn’t my best friend because best friends let each other cry on their shoulders with a good bit of tears and snot all over, but she sustained me in a way that I’d never had before, and Dana’s jealousy isolated me from it so that I’d never have that relationship with Argo at all. It was all Dana, all the time, or she was out.

We were allowed to have friends severally, but not individually.

The relationships between all of us became toxic and when that happened, I couldn’t get either one of them to understand where I was coming from. That I needed time, because this wasn’t all going to get solved in a day.

I needed my time with Dana on the ground. I needed my time with Argo in the cloud. Neither one of them got what they needed from me, and it was pulling me in different directions so that I was forced to choose. I didn’t want to play anymore. I picked up my toys and literally “went home.” Houston had nothing left for me. It was the right decision at the time to move there, but the mission was over and I aborted. I went to a mental hospital because they both meant so much to me that it was tearing my heart apart to an enormous degree and I got so far down I thought I couldn’t save myself, and I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gotten a message from Argo that changed my life. She said, “why do you think it’s everyone else’s job to fix you?” When I heard that, I had my dad drive me to the emergency room and checked myself in.

What happened was a miracle. By the end of my stay, I didn’t feel worthless anymore… partly because my cohort had plenty of people in my exact situation- unworthiness- and all of the love that poured in for me as I recovered. I never should have gone back to my house after that. Not ever. Dana mentally thrashed me with everything she had, and I found myself locked in my office with lots of sedatives so I didn’t have to face her. I just slept, disappearing into dreams of happier times, the ones where I didn’t have to worry that Dana and Argo weren’t going to be a part of my life because in my dreams, there they were… saying and doing all the right things, giving me the responses I knew I wanted because they weren’t really there to say differently.

In my waking hours, Aaron was there to wipe my tears and give me Kleenex for all the snot. I felt a little less anxiety because at the hospital, they’d given me gabapentin to take the edge off the physical reactions to anxiety, but I knew I needed to talk to someone and now, I’m getting them.

There are 30 therapists at Vesta, and I’ve been encouraged to keep trying until I find the one that feeds me, not to just take the first person I get if I don’t have the right chemistry with them. I’ve already been through four in the past that have cooked my noodle in all the wrong ways:

• Therapist #1 said to me on the second session that I was so interesting she told all her other patients about me. Dealbreaker.
• Therapist #2 didn’t talk at all, didn’t offer suggestions, didn’t do anything except look like he was half asleep. Dealbreaker.
• Therapist #3 said that she didn’t want to take me on because she was so near to retirement that she didn’t want to take me on because she thought that my therapy would take years. I respect that, but it came across as “you are way too fucked up for me to help you…. after I’d paid her $225 because she wasn’t on my insurance. Such a fucking dealbreaker that I couldn’t decide whether to cry or take a chunk out of her drywall.
• Therapist #4 ran a battery of tests on me that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was more fucked up than most people and gave me some books to read- all very good- and then when we finally got somewhere, dumped me because he said that he was too close to my family to listen to anything I had to say. Dealbreaker, especially after the MMPI, because I thought he was the first person who might ACTUALLY be able to help me.

After those four experiences, I told my intake counselor that it was a miracle I’d showed up at all. She agreed with me, and told me she was proud.

I wonder how I got this fucked up, and then I remember that it wasn’t one thing. It was emotional abuse, it was being in show mode and having a dark personality behind it, and after the emotional abuse, I got a severe case of detachment disorder from everyone I really loved, because I was convinced that because I was gay, no one would love me if I told them…. but she did….

I also told my therapist that I was great at one-on-one, and great at being in front of a crowd, but I could not do large parties or anything close to it because I was so afraid. She said that was very typical and she understood- that being in front of a crowd wasn’t personal. It’s why I’m going to be an excellent minister someday, because after the amount of therapy I will undergo myself, I will be able to handle so much more than just standing in front of a crowd.

And that’s where I’m choosing to end. All of this therapy has a point. It is to be my authentic self no matter who is in front of me. No show mode allowed.

I’m in-Vesta-ing in my health, one appointment at a time. My next one is on Sept. 15th at 8:30 AM. By then, I’ll be a year older. Maybe not any smarter, but at least beginning the process.

Amen.

In Silver Spring, there’s a great mental health facility that offers both therapy and psychiatric services called Vesta. I thought that today was open enrollment, because they do it every Tuesday and Wednesday from 10:00 to 4:30. The part I missed was that Tuesdays are in Germantown and Wednesdays are in Silver Spring. So, basically I Ubered over for nothing… well, perhaps not NOTHING. I did get my paperwork for tomorrow so that I don’t have to fill it out right before my appointment. That’s always nice. It wasn’t a total loss. I just felt dumb because I didn’t read the web site closely enough. So, I get to be a Vesta virgin all over again tomorrow.

The Uber driver that picked me up told me that he was an angel from heaven when I asked where he was from. I said, “we’re all that, but where are you from on earth?” He said that he was from Haiti. I said, “what a coincidence… my dad went to Haiti on a mission trip when I was young. What year did Baby Doc take over from Papa Doc?” He said 1986. I said that was around the time he would have gone. He said, “praise the Lord for your father.” I grinned. I do that every day. Anyway, he said that I was the first person he’d driven that knew ANYTHING about Haiti. I have that effect on people. That’s ALL I know about Haiti’s history, but it’s surprising how little it takes to make people think you know things. This has been used to both miraculous and disastrous effect.

Most of the time it’s a disaster, it’s asking people for directions in Spanish. I am not fluent, to say the least, so when people start speaking at least 400 wpm, I am lost in the first three. I just nod at derecha, derecho, and izquierda. Most of the time, I pick up at least half of what is being said, so that the next time I have to ask for directions because I’ve forgotten the Spanish ones, I am at least a little closer than I once was. In Spanish, my favorite phrase in the entire world is “habla despacio, por favor.” Please speak slower. It at least gets them down to 300 wpm. Occasionally.

Being a gringo in Maryland is interesting, while we’re on the topic of Spanish. In Texas, there’s at least some recognition that if you live in a Hispanic neighborhood, you’re going to at least pick up a few phrases. In Maryland, I have had SEVERAL people look at me like I have three heads when they say “no habla ingles” and I switch over. The funniest time was at the mall, when I asked for directions to the bathroom. The woman just held up her hands as if to say, “I have no idea what you are saying.” I said, “donde esta el bano por las damas?” I was wearing my Rice baseball cap, my surfer t-shirt, and my Converse All-Stars, complete with navy hoodie because it’s cold in the mall. She was all like, “por las DAMAS?” But she gave me directions anyway.

And then there was the time I went to SuperCuts and every single hairdresser in the place spoke Spanish. I flipped into Spanish as well, so they continued in Spanish the entire time I was there. I only picked up about half of what was said, but there was this one woman that came in earlier that they ridiculed and I started dying laughing because my first job was at SuperCuts when I was 16 and I have now proven that regardless of language spoken, the conversation is the same. And, because they thought I was fluent, every time there was a laugh line, they would point at me as if I was in on the joke. I was. Sort of. In a manner of speaking. The woman did not like her haircut and threw a fit and called the hairdresser some very bad names…. and if that’s all I got, that’s all I needed. It’s all we EVER talked about at SuperCuts.

So anyway, after I finished my time at Vesta, I decided to walk to Starbucks and try to get some work done. On the way I stopped at Smoothie King (orange/vanilla Slim and Trim, add banana) and CVS (notebook, toothbrush, cards). By the time I actually got to Starbucks, I ended up writing most of the time (by hand!). It was close to dinner when I was actually packing up, so I had a burger and fries at Mickey D’s and then walked the two miles home. That is my bargain with myself when I want a McDouble with Hot Mustard.

I also wanted to make myself tired enough that I go to bed early. The woman at Vesta said that she never knows how the crowds are going to run, whether there are going to be more people in the morning or in the afternoon. I’m going to try and shoot for 9:45. She said to get there any earlier probably isn’t advisable, because I’d just be waiting. I can’t decide how long I’m going to “wait,” because really that just means reading my Kindle. Right now I’m in the middle of Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward. Here’s something that’ll cook your noodle I’ve learned so far. Lindsay Graham is smart. I didn’t believe it at first, but read the book. Through back channels, he’s actually a friend of the Obama administration and advises on military matters. I had no idea. I thought he was just a sack of shit in a cheap suit. If Obama can give him a chance, so will I. I suppose.

Begrudgingly.

Especially as I’m waiting to become a Vesta virgin.

On Thursday night, vandals cut the word “black” from our large #blacklivesmatter banner in front of our church, and placed a picture of the reporters in Roanoke being shot on the glass doors that mark the entry. The police are involved because the picture looked like a direct threat. Despite this, the church was nearly full this morning as Rev. Jeffrey Thames guided our thinking in facing fear.

The title of his sermon was The Certain Samaritan, which talked about The Good Samaritan and made the point that we are certain we are Samaritans as well. We will not back down from attending church because of this threat. We will continue to do the work of peace and justice that we always have, because it defines who we are as a congregation.

But Jeffrey didn’t start his sermon with words. He stepped out with his horn and played Amazing Grace while the congregation sat silent, reverent in the threat placed upon us and praying for relief. I heard sniffling and saw a woman’s tears. All of the sudden, it got real. Someone had taken a piece of us, and now we needed to know what to do.

As Jeffrey played, I could hear the entirety of the people gathered take a deep breath. Sometimes, there are just no words to be said. As James Duffecy once said, music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable… and there is just a world of things we don’t know. We are venturing into the future with hopeful hearts, not that we can prevent violence, but that we can respond to it in a Christ-like way. Christ would say to turn the other cheek. I don’t necessarily believe that. While I do not condone meeting violence with violence, I do believe in non-violent protest… to take back our power as victims. To stand up and say that even if you try to hurt us, we will not back down. As Jeffrey said this morning, “we will continue to let people rest and recuperate as they need.” We will continue to clothe the naked. We will continue to feed the hungry. We will continue to make people of all faiths and origins our friends. We will continue to fight without a fight. It doesn’t take violence to respond. It takes certainty.

I want to believe that I am one of those Samaritans in Jeffrey’s sermon. When Rev. Matt said that he was a little nervous about church today, I told him afterward that I was willing to run toward the danger, because I don’t believe in using a Bible to beat people down, but hymnals are fair game. I was only half kidding. I don’t want to meet violence with violence, either, but if active shooters had shown up, I would have found a way to help. What that might have been, I don’t know. But I do know that I am at least short enough to throw someone off balance and possibly bite an ankle…. not because I want praise or gratitude, but because that’s the kind of person I believe I need to be.

Fred Rogers said that in tragedy, look for the helpers.

Jeffrey inspires me in that kind of confidence. He was a Marine (oorah!) who was routinely called to run toward danger, and he did. But violence for Jeffrey happened right here in Silver Spring. A cop asked him for his ID, and when he reached into his coat pocket, the cop pulled a gun on him. He was on the streets trying to help the homeless, and he was almost shot. Rev. Matt got him a reflective vest that says “Clergy” on the back so that hopefully, it never happens again… because there is no chance in the world that Jeffrey will ever stop running towards danger. Where there is darkness. the people who are called to be Christ in the world bring the light.

All Christians are called to be Christ in the world, not just the ones who study for ordination. The question presented today is what kind of Christian are you? Are you the kind of priest that would have walked by the injured man because you don’t want to get involved, or are you the kind of person that would take the injured man to an inn? I audibly gasped and said “wow” when Jeffrey uttered this line… that it is interesting that Jesus used the word “inn” when there was no room for him when he was born.

It was a clarion call to keep working, keep fighting, keep MOVING toward the kind of world we want to create because we are who we are, and that is CHRIST Congregational Church. What does it mean to attend a church that has Christ in the title?

I think we’ve decided on resilient.

Grant has moved out, and I’m getting another roommate soon. I would prefer a man, but at the same time, a woman is also acceptable. Once Nasim got over living next door to a lesbian, she was fine, but it took some convincing. By the time she moved out, I was genuinely sad to see her go, especially because she used to talk loudly to her family and friends in Farsi, which reminded me of Argo (the movie) constantly. I pretended she was the white guy at the end trying to prove to the guards that they indeed were making a movie and explained the story boards. It’s my favorite scene, because he turns out to be the major hero of the movie. If you haven’t read Argo (it’s based on a book by the same name written by the real guy, Tony Mendez), it’s even more full of information that I keep reading over and over because it’s such a creative op. Of course Ben Affleck had to pump up the action to make it an exciting movie, but the real story is no less gripping. Tony is a fantastic writer, and I am sad to know that he is developing Parkinson’s and may not write anything else. So there is only concentrating on Nasim and listening to lilt of her voice, sad because she doesn’t live here anymore.

Eventually we will “get back together,” because I asked Nasim and her best friend Sahar if we could write a book together. I am glad that I am on anti-anxiety medications, because it will keep me from getting rattled when they tell me their story. It is not pretty. Let’s leave it at that. They escaped from Iran. How could it be? There was no film crew for them.

I believe that immigration placed Sahar and Nasim in Albany, and Nasim has moved back. That means we’ll be Skyping and talking on the phone to get the book done, but since we’ve actually met on the ground, that will not be a problem. And Sahar is here, so we’ll be able to Skype together. They have another friend, Leyla, who is also interested in the book, so perhaps she will be in it as well. The possibilities are endless. I am floored that they would trust me with such information, and believe in me to such a degree that I am capable of getting their story right. In fact, it shook me up to the point of tears.

We talked about it right when I moved here, and I felt so broken when Dana said that I would never amount to anything that it was like Nasim invalidated her words right in front of me and I couldn’t help but cry my eyes out. It shook Nasim, but she just held me while I cried. It was one of those moments that you get all the time if you notice them. Even if this book never comes to fruition, that moment healed so much. It was better than a therapy session, because I certainly made a breakthrough.

It took all the pain of feeling worthless after bombing my relationships with Argo (the person) and Dana and turned it into hope for the future. At this point, I am not sure what that future entails, but I at least know what I’ll be doing for side projects. If there’s anything I learned by living in Portland, it’s that you are not defined by what you do for money. Most of the people working at New Seasons (Portland/Vancouver grocery stores) have Master’s degrees and are playwrights, actors, creative types just like me. If you ask them what they do, they’ll tell you who they are, not defined by something as trivial as money.

It’s why I have no fear about working at McDonald’s or a grocery store or Homo Depot or any of those places that seem menial, because I am not defined by my job. I am defined by my ability to make people and stories live forever.

I am getting excited about turning 38. It feels like the right time to have a great year, unencumbered by the past or the future, but taking one step at a time as long as I know it’s in the right direction. So far, I believe I have done very well. When Dana said that she didn’t want to be my wife anymore, I realized there was nothing left for me in Houston and I went back to all the people that loved me in DC.

It killed me that Argo made it all about her, but who could blame her? I was mean to her because I was trying to blow her away to try and save my relationship with Dana, and in a lot of ways, I chose………….. poorly. Dana was going to leave no matter what I did, and if I had been a better friend to Argo, it wouldn’t have become the mess it did when I moved to DC in the first place. I miss being a better friend to her, because I can’t think of anyone more hilarious…. Well, maybe my friend Amy Sco, but she’s 3,000 miles away.

I have to tell you the funniest story EVER about Sco and me. We were laying around on the couch at her place and we saw a local news article about a soldier who’d died in Iraq that was going to have a memorial service at Mall 205. Amy looked at me, completely deadpan, and said, “let us gather in front of the Orange Julius stand, because you know how he would have loved it.” I almost swallowed my tongue I was laughing so hard. Yes, it was evil. But that’s just the way Amy and I roll. She would OWN MY ASS at Cards Against Humanity.

Speaking of which, I have done a lot of things in Cards that would make you look at me like you’d never known I was such a sociopath, but one of the funniest things that happened is that I was playing with my friends and Matt was the judge. I didn’t have anything in my hand that was evil enough, so here’s what I did.

The black card was “here is the church, here is the steeple… Open it up and see…”

I knew that I could play to the judge, so I put down Justin Bieber. I knew I would win when he lost his shit he was laughing so hard.

And that makes me remember just how much I miss his sister, Bryn, and how it would be so cool if I could get her out here, especially on Fourth of July. This year, we had a crab fest at the house in enough time to get downtown, but I didn’t go. I probably should’ve, but crowds are not my thing at all, and I didn’t want to go by myself because crowds aren’t my “host family’s” either. Maybe next year I’ll go with my Meetup group, especially if Leslie is going. She just cracks me up.

I hope I get a roommate like Leslie. It would be good to come home at the end of the day to a roommate in which we really have a connection. I never made a connection with Grant because I was always so mad that I felt like his maid. It also wouldn’t hurt to have one of those roommates that comes in and flops on my bed and says, “what are we watching?”

Because the answer is always going to be “whatever I want. It’s my TV.”

Oh, and just for the record, I’ve found two stations on Spotify that I didn’t even know I needed, but now I use incessently. One is called “Deep Focus” and the other is called “Intense Studying.” Also, I really recommend the Chrome extension Noisli. It has all kinds of noises that you can set in the background, like busy cafe, white snow from a TV, a fan set on high, nature sounds, etc. I know this is seriously off-topic, but when am I known to stay on topic?

WE’VE MET.

My psychiatrist changed my protocol, and my dad asked me how my mood and behavior were. I’d never been asked that question, and I liked it. It was a doctorly thing to say, and yet, I haven’t had any doctor say that to me at all. Really must send my dad a thank-you card for that one. I owe him several, but this was special. It was a MOMENT, one of those things that sticks out in my brain as something simple that made me feel so much better because it was the question no one was asking and the one I needed to hear.

The answer is that my mood and behavior are great as long as I can stay awake for them. I feel settled in a way I never have, although upping my Lamictal was not the right choice, I don’t think. I don’t see any additional improvement and it makes my coordination even worse. I didn’t think that was possible since I already have a cerebral palsy, but I’ve fallen a lot more and one of them would have been a disaster if I hadn’t had my hands out. My doctor warned me this would happen, and it is not a side effect that I want to live with. Alternatively, adding the Klonopin at night has helped tremendously. I sleep well, and that is an essential part of a good mood.

The only thing that hasn’t put me in a good mood is that someone told me that they were afraid of what was lurking underneath, as if all of these major life changes are just a mask. It is the most untrue thing I’ve heard in weeks. There’s nothing lurking underneath except love, acceptance, and joy. The split personality I’ve been working with since I was a teenager is gone. I feel completely integrated, because the endless ruminations about Diane are gone. I don’t have to think about her anymore, and I haven’t had that peace since I was 12. It’s like all of the sudden, I am the person I used to be, and I’m getting to know her one step at a time. I am investing in myself in a way I’ve never had the ability- as I’ve said in earlier posts, the ability to plan forward instead of thinking about the past and how to bring it into the future with me. It’s just not possible, and I’ve finally learned that lesson. Being happy with the present and future was letting the past be the past and not trying to change it at all…. because I thought it was possible in my own little world, and it’s just not. I can no longer be the teenager stuck in an adult body ruminating on how to fix everything that’s been wrong that’s already happened. I feel healthy and healing instead of battered and broken.

I look forward to starting school, although Howard’s lack of movement has put me in the position that I can’t start in the fall. I’ll have to wait until winter. That’s going to be fun…. trudging through the snow to get to school on time. I don’t think that I will ever have children, but if I did, it would be the ultimate story…. “when I was younger, I had to trudge five miles uphill in the snow to get to school…….” Although I am old enough now that I could also tell them I rode a dinosaur and they might believe me.

I have put my application in to McDonald’s, but no callback yet. I want to work there because they have money. Big money. And they are fond of using it for education. My friend Stacey paid her way through college by working there. Which invariably leads me to old school Kanye:

But why y’all washing watch him
He gone make it into a Benz out of that Datsun
He got that ambition, baby, look in his eyes
This week he mopping floors, next week it’s the fries……

At Mickey D’s, there are scholarships out the wazoo (where is the wazoo, exactly?), so what I’m hoping is that I can use McDonald’s for tuition reimbursement. If I don’t get a job there, I will go to another company that also has tuition reimbursement because I really, really love college.

That reminds me. I haven’t looked on Howard’s web site to see if they have any positions open. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. It’s been staring me in the face and I missed it. Why did I not think of this before? My background is academic technology. Duh. I think my brain malfunctioned on that one. But to be fair, I’m on new medication that makes me so sleepy that in order to function I have to drink more caffeine than I’m sure my doctor would like. I have hi-caf black tea and those Crystal Light packets with caffeine. They don’t have that much, but they do if you slam three of them like I just did.

I am also looking at director positions in places that work with youth. I have checked out all the churches in the area, and I haven’t found anyone that’s looking for a youth director. Most of the churches around here are looking for pastors, which, honestly, I could probably do in my sleep (luckily, because I am sleepy most of the time), but having that stole and that degree means something. The ordination ceremony means something. Just because I’ve done every job in the church since I was old enough to participate and have learned how to construct a sermon doesn’t mean jack shit until I have the papers to prove that I’m capable, because it means as much to me as it does to my denomination. I can’t wait to stand in front of the bishop and have hands placed upon me. I can picture it as clearly as I can picture the mouse on my desk. This is why school is so important. I need a cohort in grad school with which to mold a clear theology, and to present to my group what I’ve come up with so far. I’m glad that I live in a city with a UCC school, and don’t have to do everything online. You’d think I’d be more comfortable in an online classroom, but it isn’t true. I realized that in my relationship with Argo. Since we were only online friends, we were only seeing a fraction of each other, when in reality, we are both so much more than what we put on the page. It will be a different concept for my cohort to see all of me, not just how I present myself on “paper.”

It’s why I love Tinder so much. People talk about it as a sex app, but not once have I encountered that. I’ve met women that live close to me that actually can meet me for coffee and we can talk in real life instead of typing out responses that may or may not reflect the authenticity of who we are.

In fact, “lawyer chic” and I met for drinks at Afterwords, and then our second date was going to Blues Alley for a jazz concert. OMG did she ever know the way to my heart. All of their entrees had jazz musicians attached to them, even Maynard Ferguson. There’s no pressure with this whole dating thing. It feels right to have someone to go out and do things, without worrying about where we are and where we’re going. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but I do know that I enjoy her company and that has to count for something. Neither of us are or want to be tied down to one person, and I think that’s appropriate for me considering I cannot think of anyone but Dana when I dream. In my dreams, we are still the hilarious couple we set out to be, and everything is back to normal. When I wake up, reality is not scary… but it does mean that I am not ready for a relationship. I probably won’t be for a long time. Both when Meag and I broke up and when Kathleen and I broke up, I waited three years to be in another relationship. That’s six years total of being by myself and trying to figure out who I am.

And that’s where I am now. Who am I without Dana? Who am I without anyone else?

Stay tuned.

I’m waiting for the second page of an article that “lawyer chic” sent me- nothing is worse than waiting for the second page of something to arrive. Maybe it’s that Starbucks has less bandwidth than I do at home, but I needed to get out of the house and do something, even if that doing something is searching for jobs at Starbucks instead of my bedroom/office. Since I didn’t get the youth director job, I’m focusing my search on both computer jobs and non-profits. Maybe they’ll marry- like IT for poor kids or poor adults. Like the mantra of FreeGeek in Portland, “helping the needy get nerdy.” I could very easily start up Evangelinux again, and that would be perfect because I could set my own schedule. The problem with that is not having a space. I might talk to the church about renting a room. That seems the most obvious place for me since I don’t drive.

However, I’d also like to be a part of the masses again. Not stuck in isolation while everyone else enjoys slamming coffee on the Metro platform as they’re running to work (well, as fast as the Metro goes, anyway). My perfect job would probably be in Takoma Park somewhere, so that Busboys and Poets was within walking distance from work and the No. 14 bus, which as I have said drops me off as close as the school bus.

The other thing is that a lot of the tech jobs are in Fairfax county, closer to my old hood than my new one. I would take a job over there, but my commute on the Metro and the bus would be over 2 hours and the traffic would be just as bad. There is no good way to travel in NoVa except Uber, because then at least you can sit in the back and get some of your work done in the car. It would be nice to arrive at the office and already have my monster of an inbox clear. I could do the same on the Metro if rush hour wasn’t standing in a can of sardines without the room to get out my laptop or my tablet, and I’m not proficient at touchscreens, anyway. As I told “lawyer chick,” typing on my phone went out with the Blackberry Pearl. She still has one. Maybe I should apply where she works. Sometimes being in the dark ages counts for a lot… even a Motorola Sidekick was better than the iPhone for me. If I could just get phone companies to listen to me when I say “don’t put the keyboard on the screen,” I would be very happy indeed.

Plus, who doesn’t miss Brickball?

As technology moves forward, I am finally old enough that I feel like a Luddite, even though I’m not. Between voice dictation and a little correction, I do just fine. However, I am MARRIED to my laptop with its full keyboard including number pad. I’ve also found a way to disable my touchpad so that it never interferes when I’m typing. It has opened up a whole new world of simplicity. I hated it when touching my palm in just the right way would erase a whole paragraph. CTRL-Z became a favorite of mine because I used it at least once every few minutes.

So now that’s solved. I got that goin’ for me.

Now that Argo knows what her present was, I will tell you. It was from Share a Coke, two bottles. One with her real name, and one with Argo. She has a fairly easy name, but with an alternate spelling, kind of like trying to find Katelyn instead of Caitlin, or Rikki instead of Ricky. I got to have a quick e-mail exchange with her and for now, I think we’re good. Peace offering accomplished. I told her I just wanted to get her something in the spirit of giving that said, “sorry I was such a bastard to you.” I don’t know how ok we are, but it was amazing how quick the rumination over the situation stopped cold. My mind freed up so much because everything was out of my control and I felt SO bad.

It feels nice not to have to worry anymore, because two things. The first is that peace is somewhat established. The second is that I carry that peace with me all the time. I do not have the capability to go back to where we were. I do not have the intestinal fortitude nor the want. I don’t know where we will go from here, but if that is the last communication I ever receive, I can wholeheartedly rest in it.

The ball is now in Dana’s court and has been for weeks with no word. If she doesn’t respond to me, honestly, good riddance. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that she told me I would never amount to anything. I do not need or want that temperature in my life, and I also do not need someone in my life that I’ve fought with and sees it as all my fault. She says that she doesn’t, but her eyes say it all. Plus, she still acts like a child in front of her parents and she’s almost 40. When I acted like an adult, it was not received well. If I’d just stayed in my place, we’d probably still be together, with me being unhappy that Dana was willing to forego standing up for herself in favor of trying to fit into the mold her parents made for her. When I stood up for her, it did not end well for me, but ultimately she is closer to her family now than she was when we were together. I can also rest in that. I was able to say clearly to her mother that she needed to get with the program, and she did… to her credit.

The fact that Dana edged me out of the equation is not my deal.

What is my deal is trying to figure out who I am without her. We talk almost every night in my head while I’m dreaming, and then in my dream I try to hand her something or reach out for her and I open my eyes and I am utterly surprised she’s not there. It doesn’t bother me so much as I am annoyed that I still dream as if we are still married, but it’s not about romance, necessarily. Sometimes when my eyes are closed I ask her for a drink of water, and then when it doesn’t appear in my hand, I remember she’s not there. It’s only disheartening for half a second, because I want to move on so much. I want to be with someone like Argo, not because I want to be with her, but because I want someone that has her ambition and drive and her absolute fire and hilarity at the same time. I deserve that in a relationship, and it took meeting her to realize what Dana and I were doing wrong. We were the same personality type in two bodies, neither one of us able to drive the bus.

We were both Type B, and probably still are, although as I recover from my childhood emotional abuse, I realize that my inner Type A is showing more and more because I believe that I am capable of direction and delegation. When I got on the Neurontin and the Klonopin, my “ADD” went away. I mean, I am sure that I will always exhibit those tendencies, but at the same time, all of the things that I attributed to ADD that were actually trauma are being resolved one day at a time.

And on that note, it’s time to plan out the rest of my day. I think I need to go back to Macy’s, and I know I need to go grocery shopping. It’s been interesting how much I’ve avoided it. I don’t like crowds. Today, I think I have the strength, because when I woke up this morning, I pissed excellence.

I took a break from blogging because I didn’t want to tell you that I didn’t get the job. The woman from the church that called me said that the meeting went on for a long time, that they thought I was brilliant and that I had a bright future in ministry, but that I was just a little too green. I asked her what might happen if the already ordained ministers got a call for churches of their own and didn’t last very long. She said, “well, we might be having a different conversation.” So I know that I did very well in the interview, and one of the things that they thought was interesting is that I was the only one that interviewed the kids as much as they interviewed me. None of the other candidates thought to ask the kids what they’d like to see in their own youth group. It got me big points with the committee, and lots of fans. She said “you cannot believe how close it came because we liked you so much. We just thought you were a little green.” I could agree with that assessment, and I thanked her for being honest about what went on in the meeting so that I had some context. It’s never happened to me after a job interview before, that someone would actually describe the meeting that happened without me. There were many people on the committee that were sad that I didn’t get the job, because they saw a passion and drive in me that they didn’t see in the other candidates. I have a feeling I will know who those people are, because they’ll come up to me at church and tell me so. Even though I didn’t get the job, I actually feel good about it. I impressed several people, more than I thought I would, and they gushed about me. I think I will volunteer so that if the pastor running the program does get a call to a church of his/her own, I won’t be so green anymore. I’ll have one more thing to put on my resume unless I get a call of my own from another church as well. I am not hesitant about that possibility. To have a committee fighting over me was very cool indeed. I do have the mad skillz. I just need more on my resume to convince people of that.

Matt told me that my resume didn’t have much in the way of youth ministry, and why would I want this job? I told him that I’d been running from a call since I was ten… and then later in the meeting, I said that I’d run from a call since early adulthood. One of the other ministers in the room (it’s a joint youth group with another church) said, “I thought you’d been running from a call since childhood. Speak to that.” I said, “this is the first time I’ve ever put my money where my mouth is. I have been running from a call since childhood, but I didn’t know how to get there from here. For the first time in my life, I’ve actually applied to school with the intention of finishing my MDiv, and the $50 I spent to apply to Howard meant more to me than gold, because it represented a new chance in life, one I knew I would take eventually, but now I’m ready (je suis prest).” He asked me why I chose Howard. I said, “first, it’s a UCC school. Second, I’ve been to majority white schools my whole life and if it is my job to be Christ in the world, then I have to understand race relations and how it affects us nationally and globally.” He said, “I have so many more questions to ask you, but I won’t in the interest of time.” We could have gone on for hours, and I hope we will meet again. If anything, I need him as an ally, because the UCC and the Presbyterians have joint ordination. It would mean a lot to me to follow in the steps of Katie Morrison and Michael Adee, who were the first lesbian and gay candidates to be ordained in the Presbyterian church. I met Katie at the More Light conference in Portland in 1997, and then in 2001, when I took Kathleen to Lambda Rising, we found a book that featured both Susan Leo AND Katie Morrison. Her chapter was called, and I remember this clearly, “Black Leather Bible Dyke.” In 1997, meeting her was one of the great moments of my life, because not only did she have her head on straight theologically, she was, in two words, fucking hot.

I keep up with Michael Adee on Facebook, and he is just a joy. His feed lights up my day, because he always has uplifting quotes and stories that don’t focus on negativity, but how we are all Christ in the world, degreed or not. I found him on Facebook because I remembered his name in all the articles about Katie and Michael getting ordained. He’s like an angel to me, because we haven’t met on the ground, but he blesses me from the cloud.

And now that the interview is over, I want to go on the record as saying I think joint youth groups are a terrible idea. The idea is to feed your own church with growth. What happens if all the youth that are supposed to go to one church end up feeding the other because it’s more “fun?” Then, one church is effectively poaching kids from the other…. and their parents, too. It also skews the relationship between the churches if the events are held at one church more than the other. In the interview, they said that I would have offices at both churches and I’d go to church there as well. The possibility of growing two churches at once floored me with awe, until I came back into my head and realized that this relationship was probably going to end poorly. They say it is working now, and I hope for them that it continues to be true. However, my church has many more programs for kids and it is word perfect (I see what I did there). I could see the poaching happening and it did not make me happy, but of course I did not say anything about that in the interview. It’s just something I saw happening in the long term, rather than right here, right now.

They also missed a chance to mold me exactly how they wanted me… that I would learn more on the job than I would in a million years of Google (from whom all blessings flow). It was a disappointment, to be sure, but not one from which I can’t rebound. I have the confidence I need because there were people on the committee set on hiring me, and in the end, they lost. But the fact that the debate was so long makes me feel incredible. I am blessed beyond all measure, and it is my plan to keep it that way.

Amen.

As I am starting this, I have exactly two hours before I go in front of the search committee in front of my church. The hymn that keeps going through my head is just as I am, without one plea… I just want to be accepted for exactly who I am, because the things that make me fallible also make me invincible. I am one narrative, and I hope they see it. I also hope they see the light of Christ that they are looking for, because I certainly have stopped hiding it. In fact, my life got a lot better when I did. When I started living simply, the light within me shined as bright as I needed it to be to change my life and heal my pain. With the frenzy of the last two years, I lost my light because I didn’t have the ability to see it. When you feel worthless, you act it.

Getting out of a crazy existence allowed me the time in the desert I needed to find myself in the middle of the mess. My own resurrection, in a manner of speaking. I couldn’t be the person I am now if I hadn’t seen the destruction of which I was capable. I couldn’t see how gigantic my love could be until I got that out of the way. It was the shock of cold water, or perhaps the smelling salts, God saying, “wake up, dumbass. I need you.” I stopped playing with darkness and started drinking tea and sitting still. I started dreaming forward, which I’ve never really been able to do. I have had the ability to endlessly ruminate on the past, but I have not had the ability to see my own future. I clued in, but it took a whole hell of a lot for it to happen, emphasis on the hell.

I am wearing the necklace that Lindsay gave me at her wedding as a maid of honor present, and in some sense, I feel that Diane is here with me, too, because even though we are apart, I know she would be doing gymnastics to hear that I finally accepted my call. Plus, Sandi Patty is playing in my headphones, reminding me of the time she was flipping through my CDs on a road trip, found a Sandi Patty album, and proceeded to sing every single track. I couldn’t help but laugh and remember our time at St. Mark’s. Plus, it was a small car and she has a BIG voice. I think we ended up rolling down the windows so everyone could enjoy the high As. 🙂

The last track I listened to was Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth, which was the last anthem the choir did at Bridgeport and one of the only things I remember singing with her at St. Mark’s. We went out like we began, and as I was singing I remembered her elbow on my shoulder, dressed in her preppy, looking all cute. I was about 13 and she was about 24, and the last Sunday at Bridgeport was 20 years later. No matter what happened, there were parts that were an amazing journey, and the music is one of them. I am getting to the point where I can listen to those songs again without pain, because there are so many reasons to smile when I think of her. There will never be a way to let her back into my life again, but at least our music is sacred to me again.

I need her as the angel on my shoulder, because she’s seen this calling in me since I was in middle school…. a cheerleader of massive proportions. I’m going to take her into the room with me. I’m also going to take my mom, dad, and sister, without whose love I never would have thought I was strong enough to take this interview in the first place. I’m also taking Sash and Bryn, whose love at Bridgeport became action. They both see this dream as clearly as I do, so they’re my angels, too.

And finally, I’m going to take Dana. She knows I’m going to ace it, even if she doesn’t say so. But I’m not taking Argo. She doesn’t do church or organized religion. I’ll see her tomorrow at Pizza Night, where I can dish all the dirt over Jack. My angels are the best, and they take me places I never thought I could go……..

just as I am.